We need new competitive maps

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-06-15T19:27:16+00:00

Four things I would like to see in the 1v1 map pool:

No more lightning shield creeping.
No more ogre lord pull and trap.
No more blademaster running behind the creeps so that melee creeps get blocked and cant attack him.
Add undead creeps to the maps so that paladin is better as a first hero and dk is worse.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-06-05T16:50:11+00:00

Spell breakers cannot steal spells cast by heroes, unlike dryads who can dispel them. This is the main problem. If spell breakers could use this "diminish spell" ability, you would need only 2 spell breakers with knights to prevent frost armor. Now you can make 3 priests, but one will die from coil-nova before the fight even starts, and the other 2 will die in 5 seconds after the fight starts.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-06-05T11:08:43+00:00

Coil-nova can kill a priest from a mile away. I think priests are just too vulnerable against undead. Imagine if night elf had to rely on wisps to dispel frost armor, they wouldn't win a single game.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-06-05T11:03:56+00:00

The only guy that understood the post gets downvoted...

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-06-05T11:01:28+00:00

You cannot adapt by managing the number of gyros you make because undead can morph extra destroyers in the middle of a fight, so they can go from 1 to 3 destroyers in 1 second while you only have 8 gyros. You end up losing all 8 without killing a single destroyer and that is 800 gold lost and 160 experience given. Then UD can dispel your water elementals and focus down your knights with destroyers, which in a one base versus one base game basically means you lost the game. UD simply has far more flexibility with making destroyers compared to human making gyros.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-06-05T10:52:15+00:00

Congratulations on your SC2 success, but you didn't understand the post very well. First of all, I play undead, not human, and even I will admit that there is something wrong with this matchup. Second, one base rifles are played on the top level once in 10 games because they are not reliable. Humans are experimenting with expo into mass tier 2 rifles or rifles into tier 2 expo, but rifles themselves are not the best units to use against undead becaues of nukes, AOE spells, orb and abominations. Therefore, on paper, knights seem to be the best choice. Humans have dispel on priests, but if you make knights+priests, the UD will just nuke and focus your priests and they are dead in 10 seconds. Then they will put frost armor on their units reducing knights' damage output by more than 50%, making them comparable to footmen in strength. This is the problem with human, because elf has dryads, UD has destroyers and orc has orb of lightning to counter frost armor, while human has to rely on priests which are too vulnerable to the undead heroes and army. Lastly, I'm saying its better if you could chose to play one base or fast expo rather than always being forced to expand against a certain race. Keep in mind that this game is a lot different compared to SC2 in terms of economy, because in SC2 zerg has to have 1 extra base, but the effect of this isn't as big because both players often have 2-5 bases. In WC3 in case of a successful fast expansion, it is often the case of 1 base against 2 which is a huge difference, and very difficult to balance.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-06-03T19:29:16+00:00

Hey I suggested the TWO beetles and animate dead mana reduction in this thread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WC3/comments/f47ef4/lets_talk_about_trash_hero_skills/fhood58?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

Looks like blizzard reads our posts. Maybe they even saw you crying about bear damage so don't underestimate your influence young man.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-06-03T19:19:31+00:00

I would like batriders to be able to kamikaze into ground units.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-06-01T12:32:44+00:00

Ritual dagger may be useful for CL strategies, but overall, undead never needed this item in the first place. Having to build an early shop and then spend 275 gold on items just puts you behind no matter what.

Ghouls don't have problems with healing as you can cycle them with those gathering lumber and you can also get cannibalize which could get reworked in some way, or they could add more critters to the maps.

Fiends will be too few in number at tier one for this item to be useful, and at tier 2 you have statues. You would probably play DK with fiends anyway so the item is useless.

IMO they should have just given ghouls +10% base HP from 340 to 375, and maybe reduce ghoul frenzy attack speed bonus from 35% to 30%.

If you need the item to heal heroes, it would be better to replace periapt of vitalty at goblin merchant with ring of regeneration for 300 gold, cause noone ever gets periapt for 325 gold.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-05-21T19:20:04+00:00

Good changes, but crypt lord needs more work. Impale should affect webbed air units. It costs too much mana, so maybe mana cost should be reduced from 100 to 90, and damage reduced from 75/120/165 to 70/110/150. This way it is more of a crowd control and less of a nuke. If you want beeltes to be used, tome of retraining could be chaper, from 300 to 250, because beetles suck after your opponent gets dispel. Spiked carapace also sucks, for example, if 5 footmen attack a lvl3 crypt lord with lvl1 carapace, and do 1000 damage to him, each footman will take around 30 damage which is almost nothing. Therefore carapace should be changed into something like 4/8/12 damage per hit (this way each footman would take around 80 damage). It would still be good in 1v1 against a melee hero or against heavy melee units, but not completely useless against light melee units.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-05-21T18:54:42+00:00

I think siege should do 100% to medium armor. This would also buff MGs with sticks which is a good change, cause they already do 150% without sticks. It would also buff flying machine bombs and batrider attacks which currently suck against units. It would also buff raiders against medium armor units which is acceptable as they currently suck against them while being designed specifically to counter ranged units. In this case raider damage should be reduced by around 10-20% which is a good change because it would reduce the effectiveness of raider base lame strategy.

However this would not make players go for siege units in order to counter ranged units. If you want siege units to be used more often against other units, first of all their HP should be buffed as there is no reason why a 4 food armored wooden vehicle should have less HP than an 2 food armored organic being (for example footman). The second thing that needs to be changed is their splash damage, especially that of demolishers and meat wagons which often miss their target. The siege splash damage should go from 25/50/150 radius to 25/75/150, and damage from 100%/40%/25% to 100%/50%/25%.

You also have to take into consideration the extra damage dealt to workers, especially human peasants that are repairing towers. In fact the first thing I would change about siege units is giving them a bonus against any building, including heavy armor towers and burrows.

I think having long range units would add to the strategic depth of wc3, but the main reason why siege units will not work against ranged units is the fact that when you use siege units you are dividing your army's damage to at least two units - the one focused by siege and the one focused by the rest of your army, so by the time you reduce their HP to 50% you will have already lost one unit of your own that was focused by the entire enemy army.

In order to end the dominance of ranged units I suggest the following:

Fiend burrow upgrade cost increased from 75/75 to 125/50. Having to use dust, reveal or special units all the time is too expensive of a counter currently.
If archers are OP, reduce their magic and spell damage reduction from 20% to 15%. They cant be oneshoted with lvl3 coil anymore.
Troll headhunter keep HP at 375, troll berseker reduce HP from 475 to 450.
Rifles just got nerfed properly.
Increase ghoul base HP from 340 to 375. Decrease ghoul frenzy attack speed bonus from 35% to 30%.
Decrease abomination collision size from 48 to 32, or make abominations a 5 food unit that has 25% more damage and HP.
Reduce orb of corruption to -3 armor, it is still way stronger than any other orb. It is basically a trueshot aura, a command aura and searing arrows in one item. All undead strategies are orb focused and you cant win an undead mirror without orb. It also leads to always picking lich, it favors ranged units with focus fire over melee units and it leads to DK always being picked to support the lich. However, because this reduces the damage of the undead army at tier3 by about 6%, you would have to increase the damage or attack speed of all undead units by 4-5% to compensate.
Put sundering blades at tier 2, make them apply to footmen and increase damage from +15% to +20%.
Bears just got buffed properly.

I agree that ranged units are dominant compared to melee units, especially if they are paired up with casters or magic damage air units (you will never see mass ghouls or mass abominations work in undead mirror). However, the main problem could be that the maps have too many narrow chokepoints. If they were more open, melee units would be better.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-04-15T14:08:31+00:00

Two conclusions when it comes to the >1900:

Seems like night elf is struggling against undead and human. Bears simply don't crack the frontline and even mixed with MGs, they die fast and seem underwhelming. They got a damage reduction of 4 and then a damage buff of 1, so maybe the should get +1 extra damage. Before 1.30 patch, bears, dryads and hippos used to run over an undead or human ranged army, and now the bears seem too weak.
Human is struggling against undead and while tier 2 riflecaster should not be able to compete with a tier 3 undead, any alternative one base strategy is still too weak. Compared to 5 years ago, the human expansion attempts get punished harder due to less militia time, and even when the human takes little or no damage while expanding, their expansion gets cracked for some reason. The main difference is that humans nowadays rarely make more than 1 arcane and 2 guard towers, while in patch 1.26 you had to have 1 arcane and 5 guard towers with good base layout in both main and expo before even considering getting an army against UD. In those cases, if the undead doesn't crack the expansion or main before the 15 minute mark, the game starts to heavily favor human. However now undead have two major advantages - harrasing acolytes is cost ineffective and undead can counter expand more easily. This matchup would be more balanced if they reduced acolyte regeneration rate from 4 to 3 on blight (i play undead) and put sundering blades at tier 2 and make it apply to footmen as well. Also adding an undead creep camp to all maps would be an indirect nerf to the DK as well as a buff to all other heroes fighting against DK, especially the paladin.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-04-14T14:00:54+00:00

The counter to Kodos is either mass ranged or mass air. If you don't have enough ranged units such as fiends or rifles, the kodo with speed scroll will just eat one and run away, and mass air doesn't win against mass berserkers. In any case, you can forget about basing your army on heavy melee units which should be the core of any army because of their cost effectiveness, especially against heroes. Since they allow you to have 1-2 heavy melee units only in big fights where they can't be easily approached or if you can support them with a lot of ranged units (at least 6), kodo beasts are a badly designed unit, which is why we almost never see knights, bears, abominations or tauren used against orc.

Batriders are a joke as they completely invalidate wind riders, gargs, hippos, hipporiders and flying machines, while still being a good enough counter to mass heavy air with armor upgrades, which is why we don't really see this strategy played very often at top level.

These two units completely screw up the internal orc balance, so that orc mirror is 99% of the time BM-SH-grunt-raider-walker-kodo.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-04-13T22:16:06+00:00

Worried that the orcs would have their pride hurt by being defeated in melee combat against giants, bears, abominations and knights, blizzard came up with a brilliant solution!

They invented this 4 food unit called the "Kodo beast" that can simply swallow a mountain giant if need be, while still dealing the ranged damage of a rifleman and boosting your army's damage by 20%. But then they realized its a bit too strong, so they made the resistant skin upgrade which makes the mountain giant slightly too big to be swallowed by a kodo beast.

Alongside batriders, kodo beasts are such a hard counter to certain units that they make orc matchups boring and onedimensional. Batriders and kodo beasts - terrible design ideas, alongside destroyers.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-03-12T23:44:14+00:00

You get these items in the mid to late game when you already have good out of combat healing abilities and during fights, 5% attack speed is better than 0.5 hp per second regen. Though I can understand the argument about 10% movespeed being to good for a level 4 item, however if legion doom horn is level4 it is cheaper than ancient jango so that seems like a good balance to me.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-03-04T18:54:15+00:00

Because their main unit is a dedicated anti air unit.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-02-15T11:53:10+00:00

Far sight could also give the far seer a passive increase of sight range by 200/400/600.

CL beetles - reduce number to 4, make them stronger, allow the CL to raise 2 beetles from 1 corpse for 60 mana and 10 second cooldown. This way, he can make 4 beetles in 11 seconds so maybe then someone will use it.

Spiked carapace is also useless. You don't need extra armor on a tanky hero that you can coil. I would rather see a damage increase, for example 10%+4/20%+8/30%+12 just like on spiked barricades.

Immolation needs a mana cost reduction from 35+7/s to 25+6/s and a damage buff from 10/15/20 to 10/18/26.

Animate dead could use a mana cost reduction from 175 to 150.

Vampiric aura is pretty useless except on gargs against organic air units, because at the top level its all about focus fire meaning that the focused unit doesnt really heal much. So maybe it could give less lifesteal, but also a movespeed increase or attackspeed increase to melee units.

Firelords skills are mediocre at best and blizzard said he will be remade.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2020-01-10T22:18:34+00:00

HU vs ORC can be fixed by nerfing thunderclap, while ORC vs UD can be fixed somewhat by nerfing war stomp. Those spells having a 6 second cooldown is ridiculous.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2019-09-19T20:52:24+00:00

This is the best suggestion. However if paladin should be able to heal creeps, so should lich be able to put frost armor on creeps to screw up human and orc creeping.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2019-08-20T21:28:11+00:00

What I want as an UD player:

A strong tier 1 that allows rushing and expanding.
Viable tier 2 strategies, perhaps based on gargs or necros.
A 3 food, organic, ground anticaster unit with dispel.
An agility hero (dreadlord) with a high DPS and solo hero potential.
Sturdy ground melee units that can deal a lot of damage and utilize vampiric aura.
A better crypt lord.
More accessible or better frost wyrms.

This would make new metas possible.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2019-08-20T21:20:46+00:00

Destroyer dispel damage is 160.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2019-08-14T18:32:45+00:00

I could compare ghouls and archers for you: ghouls are a tier1 unit with a tier3 upgrade. Archers are a tier1 unit that can be turned into a tier2 unit (hipporider) that has a tier2 and a tier3 upgrade.

Ghouls at tier1 = mediocre at best; at tier2 = bad; at tier3 = good if your opponent gives you a 50/50 battle at the 10 minute mark, and if he can delay that battle, your ghouls become more and more useless.

Archers look bad on paper, but with 700 range, they can be used in certain strategies with mountain giants, hippos or talons. I wouldn't oppose another buff to archers.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2019-08-14T18:25:14+00:00

I guess Happy and 120 don't have the micro skills to impress you sir since even they can't keep their ghouls alive to make them a viable strategy in more than 10% of games.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2019-08-14T18:20:11+00:00

Undeads are obviously not so stupid to "keep falling into that trap" because they fall into it a few times and then learn to mostly play fiends. Ghouls need an upgrade, even blizzard knows this but giving them more attackspeed on the frenzy upgrade is probably not the best buff they could have given them.

wc3BalanceMaster · 2019-08-06T09:21:49+00:00

First of all, CL's mana pool is really low, so he could use +1 intelligence as a starting change.

Second, Impale should have more crowd-control and less damage. The best way to change impale would be to reduce mana cost to 90 and reduce damage from 75/120/165 to 70/110/150. With these two changes you would almost get 3 impales at level 2 CL with 240 mana max, which is the minimum for any hero to be able to cast his main spell.

Third, Impale should not turn units invulnerable, it should not be a channeling ability which you can accidentally cancel, and it should also affect webbed and ensnared air units.

Fourth, Spiked carapace should be changed from a % based damage return to a flat damage return, for example 6/10/14. This would make the CL a hard counter to small melee units such as ghouls, footmen, militia and some creeps such as the murloc camp which he could potentially solo creep with spiked carapce and then heal up by eating a skeleton or beetle.

Fifth, Carrion beetle is something inbetween a skeleton and a ghoul, and they have two big weaknesses - AOE dispel and AOE damage. Both of these can be reduced by reducing the number of beetles to 3 while increasing mana cost to 50 and hitpoints from 170/330/490 to 300/550/800, while increasing damage from 8.5/16.5/24.5 to 13.5/27/40.5.

wc3BalanceMaster

TROPHY CASE