History LowTierLetdown / StarcraftIICoopMode

* Zagara hits all sides of the spectrum in every way possible. She specializes in throwing waves of Zerglings, Banelings and Scourge at enemies, and that's it. This reliance on suicidal units means she runs a terrible economy and is awful at long-term engagements. Further, unlike most commanders, Zagara has no way to support an ally; all she has is Mass Frenzy, an attack and movement speed buff to ally allies, and Drop Pods to spawn Roaches to help out in a fight. Otherwise Zagara can do nothing but just send more units to fight, and if they aren't making a difference she's pretty useless. On the flip side though, very often a bunch of Banelings and Scourge ''are'' enough to wipe out attack waves and objectives without needing help. The result is she's widely seen as a boring and overspecialized commander who is poor for actual cooperative play between players, and her strategy is too strong when it's effective and too weak when it isn't.
* Many players find Fenix/Talandar to be one of the weakest Commanders. Most of this centers around his units being too costly, his 6 champion units being lackluster, not having much synergy when fighting alongside other Commanders, and way too much micromanagement for little benefit. It also doesn't help that he lacks global top-panel abilities outside the 3 Fenix/Talandar transformations compared to many other Commanders who have much more to work with.

* The Horners rank among the weaker commanders at higher difficulties. The biggest problem with them is that they combine a relatively fragile army with limited production, as Mira can only have five Assault Galleons while Horner has only one Starport that produces units at a trickle (like Nova but without her powerful defensive calldowns). As such, they really ''cannot'' afford to take heavy losses, which will force them to take a long time to rebuild their army - which is all too possible with their unit composition being very tempting to just A-move through enemies, when they actually require a deceptive amount of micro to not take more damage than they deal. It doesn't help that Assault Galleons will follow your army into battle if you select your whole army, where they serve as big, slow targets that ''will'' go down if focus fired, setting you back even further. Their lack of a dedicated healing unit means that in most instances, they need to rely on [=SCVs=] to repair mechanical units until unlocking the talent for Horner's units to heal automatically (and even then, Assault Galleons did not benefit from this talent until a much later patch which gave them the regen if they have a Drone Hangar installed), which costs more resources.

* Artanis initially caught a lot of flak for his Zealots, as his Zealots change to Aiur Zealots when he reaches Level 4. The problem is that Aiur Zealots only deal one attack instead of two like normal Zealots, but have the same base damage, resulting in Artanis' Zealots having a 50% damage penalty. Their Whirlwind ability makes up for it, but the player has to tech up to a Twilight Council and research the ability, and it costs 150/150/90 so it isn't an insignificant investment. Jokes have been made that Artanis is the only commander to ''downgrade'' as he levels up. Blizzard thankfully took note of this problem, and Patch 3.1 buffed the Aiur Zealot's damage to 16 to match the standard Zealot. Ironically, he has the ''best'' Zealots now, as the single attack means they're less penalized by enemy armor and they still get the Whirlwind ability.
* Swann can be a difficult commander to play due to his slow build-up and resource-intensive playstyle, but still has many defenders due to his powerful units and defensive structures. However, his Hellbats are considered very weak units. Not only are they way too fragile for their frontline role (with less health than even Goliaths), but they're overshadowed in anti-ground firepower by eight Siege Tanks in a Hercules, and his vespene drones mean that Swann rarely, if ever, needs a mineral dump. Even with their health buffed by a whole 100 points in patch 4.2.0, almost doubling their HP, they are still often left on the backburner.
* Kerrigan's Brood Lords are roughly in the same boat as Swann's Hellbats. They're slow, fragile, and very expensive, making it very hard to justify using them over any of her other anti-ground options like Zerglings or Ultralisks (or just [[OneManArmy Kerrigan herself]]). Further rubbing salt in the wound is the fact that they're arguably overshadowed by the very Mutalisks they evolved from as an air force, since her Mutas can attack everything and deal much more damage overall while also having better mobility and not being much more fragile than the Brood Lords, especially with their regeneration upgrade making them great for sustained combat. Blizzard had to buff the Brood Lords several times just to make players consider using them.
* While Vorazun is considered a good commander, her Centurions are generally not given nearly as much respect. Despite being better than the version in the campaign (due to Darkcoil now giving them a temporary shield boost), they have to directly compete with her buffed Dark Templar, which deal with ground units much better than the Centurions do by simply shredding them, and have better survivability than Centurions to boot. Furthermore, their lack of cloaking and tendency to charge out of Dark Pylons' radius mean that Centurions don't benefit from her most powerful bonuses.
* Vorazun's Dark Archons took a huge fall in grace compared to their campaign version. In addition to Mind Control being {{nerf}}ed to have controlled units take up supply (a huge detriment considering the enormous energy cost of Mind Control requires the player to build multiple Dark Archons to use it effectively), the faster pace of Co-op and the requirement to build all the required infrastructure and needing to research their abilities on top of that makes them extremely slow to deploy. This isn't helped by their exorbitant gas cost and the limited gas income of Co-op. To top it off, they tend to draw enemy aggro extremely easily and lack cloaking, meaning they don't get Vorazun's most powerful bonuses unless she wastes energy deploying Dark Pylons. The randomized nature of enemy army compositions in every mission also makes the use of Mind Control entirely dependent on them, making such a strategy ineffective against armies that prioritize quantity over quality.
* Stukov's Brood Queens get little love for a few reasons. First, they're purely biological, meaning that unlike the rest of Stukov's manually controlled units (the Overseer notwithstanding), the Brood Queens' health points cannot be restored by units such as [=SCVs=] and Science Vessels; any damage they take will be that much more long-term. Ocular Symbiote is rendered redundant with the Overseer unit as well as the ability not increasing a unit's attack range in addition to its field of vision and Spawn Broodling is rendered redundant from the Broodlings spawned from infested civilians and the Infest Structure ability. With a unit with little longevity and few worthwhile tricks to provide, the Brood Queen is seen as an investment better made on more armored units and research.
* Tychus, while generally considered to be a great commander that both serves to support others with his strong earlygame presence and his ability to heal and tank damage for his ally while maintaining a tiny footprint, has a few Outlaws that are mostly relegated to the bench. Blaze is largely overshadowed as a tank by the more practical Cannonball due to the latter's ability to reliably bring aggro on himself by diving into the enemy first, not taking bonus damage due to lacking the Armored tag, and having his main tanking gear ''not'' be his ultimate, while Blaze's main advantage over Cannonball largely boils down to being good at clearly large groups of Light units, something that's only really relevant in Infested-centered maps. Similarly, Lt Nikara finds herself largely overshadowed by Rattlesnake due to her focus being entirely dedicated to healing, inability to heal herself, and having no attack.

* Zagara hits all sides of the spectrum in every way possible. She specializes in throwing waves of Zerglings, Banelings and Scourge at enemies, and that's it. This reliance on suicidal units means she runs a terrible economy and is awful at long-term engagements. Further, unlike commanders, Zagara has no way to support an ally; all she has is Mass Frenzy, an attack and movement speed buff to ally allies, and Drop Pods to spawn Roaches to help out in a fight. Otherwise Zagara can do nothing but just send more units to fight, and if they aren't making a difference she's pretty useless. On the flip side though, very often a bunch of Banelings and Scourge ''are'' enough to wipe out attack waves and objectives without needing help. The result is she's widely seen as a boring and overspecialized commander who is poor for actual cooperative play between players, and her strategy is too strong when it's effective and too weak when it isn't.

* Alarak's third Prestige, Shadow of Death, allowed his Death Fleet to become permanent additions to his army instead of being temporary... at the expense of the Death Fleet's units all having their life, shields, and damage cut in half and Summon Death Fleet's cooldown being drastically increased. Unfortunately, this also means that it's no longer good for anything other than giving him a mass teleport on a 60-second cooldown, which while effective in its own right, came off as severely disappointing to Alarak fans since the Death Fleet dies very easily and won't do much of anything aside from that, and it's heavily overshadowed by his other Prestiges (Artificer of Souls turns his Wrathwalkers into meat grinders, while Tyrant Ascendant turns Alarak himself into a murder machine with Empower Me constantly up). Shadow of Death thus became the first Prestige to be completely reworked, as Patch 5.0.3 changed its functionality entirely to let Alarak build a Mothership for 400/400 using the calldown and then warp in Destroyers from the Mothership for additional resources, and most significantly removed the lowered stats. The end result is considered [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap far more powerful and enjoyable]], finally allowing the Death Fleet to live up to its name and allow Alarak to rampage through enemies with a massive deathball of air units.

* The Horners rank among the weaker commanders at higher difficulties. The biggest problem with them is that they combine a relatively fragile army with limited production, as Mira can only have five Assault Galleons while Horner has only one Starport that produces units at a trickle (like Nova but without her powerful defensive calldowns). As such, they really ''cannot'' afford to take heavy losses, which will force them to take a long time to rebuild their army - which is all too possible with their unit composition being very tempting to just A-move through enemies, when they actually require a deceptive amount of micro to not take more damage than they deal. It doesn't help that Assault Galleons will follow your army into battle if you select your whole army, where they serve as big, slow targets that ''will'' go down if focus fired, setting you back even further. Their lack of a dedicated healing unit means that in most instances, they need to rely on [=SCVs=] to repair mechanical units until purchasing the upgrade for Horner's units to heal automatically, which costs more resources.

* Alarak's third Prestige, Shadow of Death, allowed his Death Fleet to become permanent additions to his army instead of being temporary... at the expense of the Death Fleet's units all having their life, shields, and damage cut in half and Summon Death Fleet's cooldown being drastically increased. Unfortunately, this also means that it's no longer good for anything other than giving him a mass teleport on a 60-second cooldown, which while effective in its own right, came off as severely disappointing to Alarak fans since the Death Fleet dies very easily and won't do much of anything aside from that, and it's heavily overshadowed by his other Prestiges (Artificer of Souls turns his Wrathwalkers into meat grinders, while Tyrant Ascendant turns Alarak himself into a murder machine with Empower Me constantly up). Shadow of Death thus became the first Prestige to be completely reworked, as Patch 5.0.3 changed its functionality entirely to let Alarak build a Mothership for 400/400 using the calldown and then warp in Destroyers from the Mothership for additional resources, and most significantly removed the lowered stats.
* Kerrigan's first Prestige, Malevolent Matriarch, doubles the bonuses from Malignant Creep, letting her Creep Tumors spread Creep faster and farther and give more attack speed and health regen. However, this comes at the hefty cost of ''removing her Omega Network'', which is not only better at getting her army around the map than the speed boost from Creep but also does what the Prestige tries to do (let her spread Creep around the map more easily) way more effectively. Furthermore, spreading Creep with Creep Tumors is way, way too slow for the aggressive pace of Co-op Missions even with the increased spread range, especially since one attack wave will clean up most of your Creep Tumors and make you start from scratch, limiting this Prestige to a heavily situational option for when you know you're going to be turtling on Dead of Night or Temple of the Past. The prestige was thus heavily buffed to give her Queens full movement speed off Creep and allow them to deploy Creep Tumors off Creep to make it easier to use.

!Commanders
* Artanis gets flak in general for essentially being a SkillGateCharacter: easy to pick up and use, but otherwise underwhelming in almost every way. His army units are good, but not great at their roles compared to other commanders' arsenals, and they all suffer from relatively low damage output. His calldowns are considered some of the weakest in the game; Shield Overcharge and Solar Bombardment are crippled by their glacial cooldowns, his power field is good for replacing units and not much else, and Orbital Bombardment is just embarrassingly bad in general (especially since Karax has the ''exact same calldown'', only better in nearly every way). What usage he ''did'' have in lategame more or less boiled down to being brought along to use his ''Guardian Shell'' to cheese mechanics based on dealing high burst damage, an ability that requires precisely ''zero'' actual involvement on his player's part. He got a massive buff on all fronts in 4.2.4, which mostly saved him.

* Many players find Fenix/Talandar to be one of the weakest Commanders. Most of this centers around his units being too costly, his 6 champion units being lackluster, not having much synergy when fighting alongside other Commanders, and way too much micromanagement for little benefit. It also doesn't help that he lacks global top-panel abilities outside the 3 Fenix/Talandar transformations compared to many other Commanders who have much more to work with. Several patches after his release buffed his gameplay significantly in all fields to try and redeem him.
** While Fenix's power level was eventually brought up to scratch, he ran into another problem: since he's mostly an A-move commander that's encouraged to build all of his units to cover for each other's weaknesses, he's drawn flak for being kinda boring to play since there's not a whole lot of variety in his builds aside from varying his unit ratios (unless you want to challenge yourself and not build a portion of his army entirely) and there really isn't anything interesting you can do with units that are designed to just attack-move into the enemy. Furthermore, like Zagara, all he really does most of the time is just throw units at the enemy, with only a few ways to support his ally.

!Units

* Swann can be a difficult commander to play due to his slow build-up and resource-intensive playstyle, but still has many defenders due to his powerful units and defensive structures. However, the one aspect of his playstyle that no one will defend are the Wraiths. Whereas the Hercules and the Science Vessel serve as force multipliers that much improve his army once in the field, Wraiths are generally agreed to be the weakest units in Swann's roster; they're not powerful, cheap or even good at their specific job, and serve only to remind players why they were replaced by Vikings and Banshees in melee. Much like Fenix, Swann got heavily buffed over patches to try and make him better and bring him out of Nova's shadow. The Wraith was likewise thrown a bone with a new upgrade that greatly increases its attack damage while moving, making it viable in its own right for the sheer burst damage they can deal while stutter-stepping.
** Swann's Hellbats are likewise considered very weak units. Not only are they way too fragile for their frontline role (with less health than even Goliaths), but they're overshadowed in anti-ground firepower by eight Siege Tanks in a Hercules, and his vespene drones mean that Swann rarely, if ever, needs a mineral dump. They had their health buffed by a whole 100 points in patch 4.2.0, almost doubling their HP, and are still often left on the backburner.
* Kerrigan's Brood Lords are roughly in the same boat as Swann's Wraiths and Hellbats. They're slow, fragile, and very expensive, making it very hard to justify using them over any of her other anti-ground options like Zerglings or Ultralisks (or just [[OneManArmy Kerrigan herself]]). Further rubbing salt in the wound is the fact that they're arguably overshadowed by the very Mutalisks they evolved from as an air force, since her Mutas can attack everything and deal much more damage overall while also having better mobility and not being much more fragile than the Brood Lords, especially with their regeneration upgrade making them great for sustained combat. Blizzard had to buff the Brood Lords several times just to make players consider using them.

!Prestiges

* Han & Horner's Galactic Gunrunners seems entirely self-defeating. It removes the cap on Bombing Platforms, but building more than 10 is excessive and supply-consuming enough already. With this prestige doubling the price of building Bombing Platforms and ''not'' decreasing their demand in supply (which could be used for building an army), the benefits of this prestige may as well not exist.

* Abathur's third Prestige, The Limitless, allows him to have any number of Leviathans and Brutalisks active instead of being capped at 3 apiece. The problem? This prestige reduces the bonuses his units get from Biomass and ups the Ultimate Evolutions' requirement to ''200'' Biomass. This cripples his early game so much it's often considered a ''direct nerf'' from his base kit, since Abathur's game plan hinges on him snowballing with early Biomass to roll out Brutalisks as quickly as possible and use them to push; halving the rate at which he powers up and gets his Ultimate Evolutions means you're hard-pressed to get even your first six Ultimate Evolutions, much less the seventh and beyond. Unlike many other underpowered Prestiges, The Limitless did not receive any buffs in the first batch of Prestige changes in patch 5.0.3. and is now considered one of the worst in the game.