Air Support

Air Support is a support perk that is available at the beginning of the game for all heroes. Air Support will cause a Battlecruiser to permanently follow you throughout the game, similar to the Battlecruiser World Event. However, the Battlecruiser given by Air Support has certain other abilities. First, it has significantly higher attack damage than standard Battlecruisers because it attacks twice. Second, unit kills secured by the Battlecruiser count towards your kill streak and kill score. Third, the Battlecruiser is a detector within range 9 and has a sight radius of 12+6. This sight radius also allows you to get vision on the Brain Bug to nuke him without triggering the Elite Brutalisk base spawners.

Air support also supplies the player with all air support talents:

* Call in the Fleet (Reduces BC support cooldown 20 seconds)
* Dusk Wings (Additional personal Dusk Wing whenever BC support arrives)
* Vice Admiral (70% chance of an additional personal Battle Cruiser whenever BC support arrives)
* ~~Rainmaker (Every 6th nuke spawns a BC for the player. Additionally each nuke has 5% chance of spawning a BC)~~ Moved to Doomsday perk in 14.2.

This perk is great for those who are building armies or who like an extra helping hand in both clearing and massacre bonuses. Furthermore, the Battlecruiser is counted as a minion, so the Leadership perk will affect its damage output. Characters without consistent ways to get vision on high ground such as Tychus, Swann, or Tassadar may find it useful as a spotter when trying to push into high ground areas filled with spine crawlers.

Its combination of high-ground vision, steady long-ranged DPS, and additional 4 talents make it a very powerful perk for all players.

Air Support Perk has also been covered in the official Perk Detail Overview on BlacKcuD's blog.

The permanent battlecruiser has a behavior which increases attack speed by +35%, increases attack range by +1.5, move speed by +100%, acceleration by +300%, +1 attack, +6 sight radius, and adds +150% spell damage (for Yamato Cannon). Due to how behaviors are added, leadership only adds 50% to the base damage, resulting in +200% spell damage.

At 4000 kills, a bonus battlecruiser is created which isn't owned by the player, but receives +3 attacks and +100% damage.

# The Numbers

1. Battlecruiser (benefits with a +50% boost from the leadership perk)
	1. ATS Laser Battery
		* Damage = 70 x 2 = 140, regular Battlecruisers only shoot once
		* Attack Speed = 1 / 1.35 = 0.74
		* Range = 14 + 1.5
		* Armor Reduction = 0
	2. Yamato Cannon (Spell damage)
		1. Damage = 275 x 2.5 = 687 (x3 = 825 with Leadership)
		2. Attack Speed = 8 / 1.35 = 5.9
		3. Range = 14 + 1.5
		4. Only attacks targets directly in front of the BC
	3. ATA Laser Battery
		* Damage = 180
		* Attack Speed = 2 / 1.35 = 1.48
		* Range = 14 + 1.5
		* Armor Reduction = 2
2. Dusk wing (benefits with a +20% boost from the leadership perk)
	1. Screecher Missile (attacks in a line)
		1. Damage = 40
			1. Against Light = +8
			2. Against Heroic = +8
			3. The carpet bomb affect does 75% of the above damage
		2. Attack Speed = 2
		3. Range = 8

The Battlecruiser's long range ATS shot alone will provide 189 flat DPS, or 284 DPS with Leadership, making it a very powerful damage boost especially early game. Including Yamato cannon adds an additional 116 DPS, or 140 DPS with Leadership.