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Co-op Commander Guide: Abathur

Evolution Master

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Commander Summary

Abathur uses biomass collected from the enemy's fallen units to enhance his own units. Some units can evolve into Ultimate Evolutions - massive units that can lead the charge against Amon.

Level Unlocks

Level/Icon	Name	Description
	Biomass Harvester	Abathur's units gain increased life, attack speed, and energy regeneration by collecting Biomass from fallen enemies. Roaches do not cost vespene gas. Larvae spawn at an increased rate.
	Ultimate Evolution	Unlocks the ability for ground units with 100 stacks of Biomass to evolve into Brutalisks. Air units with 100 stacks of Biomass evolve into Leviathans.
	Virulent Nests	Enemies damaged by Toxic Nests drop additional biomass and have attack and movement speeds slowed. Toxic Nests have a chance to respawn on death. Toxic Nests cannot be targeted by the enemy.
	Roach Warren Upgrade Cache	Unlocks the following upgrades at the Roach Warren: Roaches gain +6 armor when under 50% life. Increase the damage of Ravager's Corrosive Bile ability by 40.
	Improved Mend	Mend can store up to 3 charges and its cooldown is reduced by 30 seconds.
	Evolution Chamber Upgrade Cache	Unlocks the following upgrade at the Evolution chamber: Allow Hatcheries, Lairs and Hives to birth two Swarm Queens simultaneously. Increase the healing of the Swarm Queen's Rapid Transfusion by 10 and allow it to heal both biological and mechanical units.
	Biomass Recovery	When killed, your units have a 50% chance to drop all their Biomass.
	New Unit: Viper	Flying caster. Able to manipulate battlefield conditions. Can use Parasitic Bomb, Consumption, Disabling Cloud, and Abduct abilities. Can attack air units.
	Infestation Pit Upgrade Cache	Unlocks the following upgrades at the Infestation pit: Unlock the Swarm host's Deep Tunnel ability, which allows it to quickly burrow to a target location. Unlock the Viper's Paralytic Barbs ability, which increased the stun duration of Abduct.
	Symbiote	Brutalisks and Leviathans gain Symbiotes that follow them, attacking enemies and protecting their host with a damage absorbing shell.
	Spire Upgrade Cache	Unlocks the following upgrades at the Spire and Greater spire: Increase the Guardian attack range. Enable the Devourer's attacks to deal area damage. Upgrade the Mutalisk's attacks to deal 100% bonus damage to armored units.
	Mutagenic Potential	Ravager, Guardian, Devourer morph times and resource costs reduced by 50%.
	Locust Injection	Enemy units have a chance to spawn friendly Locusts upon death.
	Roach Evolution: Vile	Upgrades Abathur's Roaches to the Vile Strain. Assault unit. Regenerates life quickly while burrowed. Attacks debilitate the target, slowing its attack and movement speeds (by 75%). Can attack ground units.
	Biotic Leech	Abathur's units heal themselves for 1% of the damage they deal per stack of Biomass they possess.

Highlighted rows denote large power spikes for the commander.

Achievements

The commander-specific achievements for Abathur are:

Achievement	Name	Description
	Big Game	Deal 500,000 damage with Brutalisks or Leviathans in Co-op Missions.
	Morphology	Morph 50 Ravagers, Devourers, or Guardians in a single mission on Hard difficulty.
	Symbiosis	Heal 50,000 life on allied units with Abathur's Mend in Co-op Missions.
	Toxicity	Deal 25,000 damage with Toxic Nests on Hard difficulty in Co-op Missions.

Calldowns

The calldowns for Abathur, at level 15, with no mastery points added are:

Calldown	Name	Description	Recommended Usage	Numbers
	Spawn Toxic Nest	Spawns a Toxic Nest that generates creep at the select location. Deals damage and slows when enemies walk over them. Enemies damaged with Toxic Nests drop additional biomass. Toxic Nests have a chance to respawn.	Spawn Toxic Nests at the start of the game and lure enemies with a Roach or Spore Crawler into them to get your first Ultimate Evolution up. Place Toxic Nests over enemy spawn locations to instantly kill attack waves. Put Toxic Nests in paths of attack waves to weaken them. Place one Toxic Nest between your expansion's rocks and mineral patch so that two spine crawlers can be placed to clear the rocks.	Coolup: 5 charges to start Cooldown: 20 seconds Max Charges: 5 Spawn Time: 15 seconds Damage: 125 Mov. Spd. Slow: 75% Atk Spd. Slow: 75% Slow Duration: 5 seconds Respawn Chance: 60% Additional Biomass: 50%
	Mend	Heal all allied units and structures instantly and provides a heal over time for a small period of time.	Useful when taking long engages or when trying to push consistently on maps.	Coolup: 3 charges to start Cooldown: 120 seconds Initial heal: 100HP Gradual heal: 50HP Heal duration: 10 seconds

Note: Biomass drops at a rate of 2.5 biomass per supply of unit killed.

Sub-Ascension Leveling

Difficulty: Easy

The hardest part of leveling Abathur is level 1, where he doesn't have access to his Ultimate Evolutions, which grant a massive power spike to the commander. At this level, build a Roach/Ravager/Queen composition to start. Mutalisks are not too great, because they don't have the life leech from biomass gathering, which makes them very fragile.

While leveling through Mastery levels, allocate points with an equal split on Power Set 3.

Masteries

Below are the three Power Sets for Abathur with the recommended point allocations for each. Note that these are meant to serve a general, all-purpose build that is effective across all maps with no Prestiges selected. You are highly encourged to change these masteries to suit your playstyle and particular challenges you face (e.g. Weekly Mutations).

Power Set 1:

Power	Value	Recommended Points to Add	Further Considerations
Toxic Nest Damage	2% per point 60% maximum	30	Points can be added to Mend Healing Duration if you would like to get more out of the healing and find it is useful. A possible optimization that can be made is to use the Toxic Nest Damage to 1-shot up to a particular unit and then put the remaining points into the Mend Healing Duration mastery. You may optimize using the Mastery Breakpoints Calculator.
Mend Healing Duration	10% per point 300% maximum	0

Toxic Nest Damage is generally the better choice for an all-round build. Since Queens can fill the role of healing with Abathur, all points should be added to Toxic Nest Damage.

Power Set 2:

Power	Value	Recommended Points to Add	Further Considerations
Symbiote Ability Improvement	3.33% per point 99.9% maximum	30	The Double Biomass Chance mastery can allow you to get your Ultimate Evolutions faster. It also gives you max biomass units faster, which can be incredibly powerful. If you find you struggle with biomass, putting some points into this mastery might help.
Double Biomass Chance	1.5% per point 45% maximum	0

By playing efficiently, biomass should never be a problem. Additionally, biomass is critical at the early stages in the game as you get your Ultimate Evolutions out, after which they can handle the mission fine. With effective usage of Toxic Nests, you should have more than enough biomass to get your first Ultimate Evolution out and snowball the game.

Power Set 3:

Power	Value	Recommended Points to Add	Further Considerations
Toxic Nests Maximum Charges and Cooldown	1 per point 30 maximum	15	There should always be a split between these two unless you find you're lacking Toxic Nests. The best way is to find a balance between the cooldown and charges of Toxic Nests and your playstyle.
Structure Morph and Evolution Rate	-2% per point -60% maximum	15

Having more Toxic Nests available to you is good, which is why points are added in the first mastery. However, at max level, the Toxic Nest charges you get are way too high to be used efficiently, and so, the other mastery is used to spend the remainder of points.

Prestiges

Below are the prestiges for Abathur. Note that "Effective Level" is the level at which the prestige achieves it full effect.

Level	Name	Description	Effective Level	Notes
1	Essence Hoarder	Advantages: Combat units can hold an additional 25 Biomass and have an additional 50% chance to drop their Biomass upon death. Disadvantages: Ultimate Evolutions are unavailable.	7	Stacks additively with the Biomass Recovery Level 7 Unlock Talent, providing 100% chance to drop Biomass. Biomass bonuses also extend linearly through the extra 25 Biomass collected.
This prestige is very useful while leveling sub-mastery Abathur in the early levels as Ultimate Evolutions are not very strong without their Symbiotes which unlock at level 10. However, at Mastery level, this prestige remove Abathur's extremely powerful early-game and mobility, and should be avoided. This prestige works well against mutators like Black Death, which heavily punishes Ultimate Evolutions.

Level	Name	Description	Effective Level	Notes
2	Tunneling Horror	Advantages: Locusts have 50% increased attack range, movement speed, and duration. The Deep Tunnel upgrade no longer requires Hive, no longer requires vision, and can be used by Roaches and Ravagers. Disadvantages: Combat units cost 25% more vespene gas.	9	Locusts spawned by the Level 13 unlock also get the prestige buffs
This prestige allows Abathur to move his entire Roach/Ravager army through the Deep Tunnel ability as well as providing buffs to his Swarm Host's Locusts. In general, it isn't very useful, as attack waves can be intercepted by Brutalisks and Toxic Nests. However, this prestige does open up some creative methods that will allow the Abathur player to snipe objectives if they choose to go for a pure ground army, with minimal cost increase to them.

Level	Name	Description	Effective Level	Notes
3	The Limitless	Advantages: The number of Ultimate Evolutions is no longer limited to 3. Disadvantages: Ultimate Evolution requires 200 Biomass. Biomass is less powerful.	2	Benefits gained per Biomass pickup is halved. At 200 Biomass, bonuses match Biomass bonuses of other prestiges at 100 Biomass.
At first glance, this prestige might look great, but it actually slows down Abathur's powerful earlygame, which is one of his greatest strengths. Abathur's power lies in his ability to clear missions as quickly as possible. This prestige will work well on missions with a fixed time, assuming the Abathur player is active with their Biomass collection, but it should not be the go-to pick for Abathur.

While leveling Sub-mastery, Essence Hoarder will allow Abathur to recover all the Biomass his army drops after level 7, making it a great choice for general play. Post-mastery, a player can either choose no Prestige talent or Tunneling Horror, depending on their intended playstyle to help them carry them to victory.

Recommended Army Composition

The recommended army composition for Abathur is below. Note that this assumes no Prestige talent selected and recommended Mastery Allocations. This is a basic recommendation for your army framework. It is recommended to gain an understanding for each of the units in the Units section and further add tech units so that you are able to better handle the situations you face.

Ultimate Evolutions should make up the core of your army and should be rushed out as soon as possible, as they are significantly stronger than any other unit in Abathur's arsenal. After that, gas income can be spent on upgrades and Mutalisks.

Add Swarm Queens to your army to gain additional healing for your units.

Add Devourers to your army when dealing with armored air units to provide you with armor-shred as well as anti-air splash damage.

Combat Units

For more information on Abathur's unit stats, comparison between units and upgrade calculations, visit the Data Tables page.

Abathur's combat units are listed below:

Build Order

Below is the standard economic build order for Abathur. For more information on how to read and construct your own build orders, please check the Build Order Theory page.

14 Overlord
17 Roach Warren
20 Spine Crawler
19 Spine Crawler
18 Extractor
17 Extractor
20 Roach
22 Overlord
22 Hatchery
22 Extractor
22 Extractor

Gameplay Guide

Playstyle Traps

A common trap for Abathur players is to go for a mass Roach build. While Roaches can potentially reach 15 armor, they do not deal a lot of damage and can have a lot of trouble dealing with attack waves and objectives.

Additionally, the mass Roach build cannot deal with air units, causing players to resort to converting some Roaches to Ravagers. Ravagers can, however, work well, given a player has sufficient experience. Effectively dealing with air unit using Corrosive Bile will require a little practice.

Biomass Calculation

Biomass drops are calculated as follows:

1. Calculate the Base Biomass drop:
   • If the unit is a Critter, base drop is 1
   • If the unit is a Hybrid, base drop is 12
   • If the unit's supply is more than 4, base drop is 12
   • Otherwise, base drop is 2 x Unit Supply
2. Calculate the Bonus Multiplier:
   • Bonus multiplier is set at 1
   • If the unit was damaged by a Toxic Nest, bonus multipler is 1.5
   • Override the bonus multiplier with a value of 2 with a random chance based on the Double Biomass Chance Mastery allocation
3. Calculate the Difficulty Multiplier:
   • For Brutal difficulty, this is 1.25

The Biomass dropped is the Base Biomass Drop x Bonus Multiplier x Difficulty Multiplier

Biomass Effects

Units can collect Biomass drops (up to a maximum of 100) to become stronger. The effects of 100 Biomass are shown below for each of Abathur's units:

Unit	Max Biomass Effect
Roach	300% Life 100% Attack Speed +5 Armor 100% Biotic Leech
Ravager	300% Life 100% Attack Speed 100% Biotic Leech 50% Corrosive Bile Cooldown
Swarm Host	300% Life 50% "Spawn Locusts" Cooldown
Locust*	300% Life 100% Attack Speed 100% Biotic Leech
Mutalisk	300% Life 100% Attack Speed 100% Biotic Leech
Guardian	300% Life 100% Attack Speed 100% Biotic Leech
Devourer	300% Life 100% Attack Speed 100% Biotic Leech
Viper	300% Life 100% Attack Speed 100% Biotic Leech 500% Energy Regeneration
Swarm Queen	300% Life 100% Attack Speed 100% Biotic Leech 500% Energy Regeneration

*Locust buff based on parent Swarm Host biomass.

Toxic Nest Usage

When Toxic Nests are placed on the ground, they detonate as soon as enemy units touch them. This is sometimes suboptimal and it may be worth setting up a few nests to manual detonation by right-clicking the Detonate ability. The reason is shown below.

When a stream of enemies run towards a nest, the nest will detonate when the first one (the one leading the group) touches the nest, as shown below:

The result is a highly reduced amount of biomass gained, because only a few units are killed and not all of the Nest's Area of Effect is utilized. Additionally, the units in the attack wave may still be alive.

A more efficient use of the Toxic Nest is to detonate it when the attack wave is in the middle of the nest. This maximizes the damage of the nest. It is recommended to re-enable automatic detonation to detonate the nests, rather than manually detonating nests in a group to prevent you from detonating unncessary nests.

The result is significantly more biomass obtained. It is possible to wipe out small attack waves with a single nest.

When placing several nests, it is recommended to use a checkerboard pattern for nests to maximize nest damage cover and minimize unnecessary overlap of the nest damage area.

A video is below:

Biomass Farming

This section provides the recommended location to farm Biomass on all the maps currently present in Co-op. The most efficient farming technique is to place your Toxic Nests down, disable the automatic detonation on the nests, and use a Spore Crawler to lure units into the nests. Usually, the first attack wave will spawn near where you are farming, allowing you to clear it too. Once you have your first Brutalisk, you can use it to lure to farm additional Biomass.

In general, Zerg provides the easiest Biomass farming, due to the large presence of weak units. Terran is most difficult, due to the fact that units are normally hiding inside Bunkers.

Mission	Farming Location
Chain of Ascension
Cradle of Death
Dead of Night
Lock & Load
Malwarfare
Miner Evacuation
Mist Opportunities
Oblivion Express	This is a risky approach due to the presence of air units. The goal is to kill off enough ground units to produce 100 Biomass so that a Brutalisk may be made to take care of the air units. If you are uncomfortable with this method, farm Biomass near the top left camp entrance and wait for the attack wave.
Part & Parcel	Enemy race will determine where to gather Biomass. These areas are shown in the image.
Rifts to Korhal
Scythe of Amon	Clear out the enemy camp outside Player 2's base first to give you a small amount of Biomass. Continue luring units that are spawned from the expansion Sliver's Void Rifts.
Temple of the Past	Place Toxic Nests in front of the middle lane's rocks to clear the attack wave before they deal damage to the rocks.
The Vermillion Problem	Against Terran, you may farm Biomass from the island on the left first before moving to the central island.
Void Launch	After you clear the units in the marked area, place Toxic Nests near the spawning location to clear the attack wave.
Void Thrashing

Playstyle Tips

• At the start of the game, spawn Toxic Nests and use a Roach or Spore crawler to lure enemies into them to get your Ultimate Evolution out as fast as possible.
• Clear your expansion with two spine crawlers and a Toxic Nest to spread creep for them.
• Always aim to have all six Ultimate Evolutions out, starting with at least one Brutalisk.
• Focus your biomass collecting on one unit at the start of the game, rather than spreading it out across all your units to speed up getting your Ultimate Evolutions.
• Keep Brutalisks away from units that deal bonus damage to armored units like Immortals.
• Add Swarm Queens to enhance survivability of your army.
• Use Devourers to counter air compositions.
• Often with Abathur, you will float minerals. Make Spine and Spore Crawlers (with creep from Toxic Nests) at strategic locations as a mineral dump.
• More skilled players can disable the Toxic Nest auto-detonate and re-anable it when enemies clump over the nests to increase nest efficiency.
• More skilled players can add two to four Vipers to their composition and make use of Disabling Cloud and Abduct.
• Loading units into Nydus Worms will prevent them from taking DoT (damage over time) damage.

Note: All data generated on this site is based on Brutal difficulty. Timings, compositions and other elements may differ on easier difficulty levels.

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