Perhaps someone mentioned this before but Spellbreakers vs Heroes burn ONLY 4 mana per hit. In your video you mentioned them burning 20 mana vs heroes which feels understandable because Spellbreakers are extremely annoying. Frankly i would remove all forms of mana burn from the game and rebalance from that point, but reducing all forms of mana burn by about 33% would be a decent start.
> educing all forms of mana burn by about 33% would be a decent start. 33% you say? Deal. Demon Hunter had his original mana burn cut in half from its original 100/200/300. 65/135/200 mana burn for 65 mana please, with 300/500/700 range -_-...
But why? they are a unique unit, with a special kind of "anti magic" theme to them, their mana burn is awesome, its not OP as well, it is only strong when you have a bunch of them focusing your hero, then, yes, annything should be OP when you are applying it "times 10" to a single unit.
@@thomaskunz3089 Burning mana in a game that is all about magic means turning everyone into basic footman. That is an awful anti-fun game design. No one wants their heroes to be footman. This is not about counter play. It is just not fun.
very nice idea and lots of work! always great to hear your thoughts on WC3! Especially when so-called pro-players are lazy af and dont do the necessary feedback work, people like you and me have to step up, do whats right and take the blame after :D
Tranquility had one which they nerfed several times then finally removed altogether. Actually you could use potion of invulnerability with them until 2004 patch made them remove it (which is bs, none of the ults say they will cancel it)
IMO ultimates should just cost no (or very little) mana. They already have big CDs that limit their use, and it’s a massive feel-bad when you finally get to level 6 and can’t even use the stupid thing because you’ve been using your other abilities, or just got mana burned, or whatever.
@@CRuduxypegg huh, wasn't aware there was one at some point. Can't see a reason why a couple of seconds of invulnerability on an ult needs to be nerfed.
@@ek70 Can't make an ultimate stronger than a normal ability like storm bolt or hex :\ They think it is more balanced for a normal skill to foil ults..
MGs and POTM are two NE units that has so much potential. Some ideas to make them better. MG Changes: TAUNT REWORK: Option 1: Taunt makes MGs beat their chest for about a second now. What if that animation can be lengthened to about 4 to 5 seconds? MGs remain still, like a channeling ability, beat their chest continuously for a certain duration and it makes units continue to attack it even when they are issued another command, as long as MGs taunt animation lasts. It can be interrupted with storm bolt, ensnare and all that stuff. This doesn't change the ability that much, just makes it as a channeling ability. Taunt also affect towers. (doesn't taunt do that already? not sure) Option 2: Alternatively, and this requires a bit more change to the taunt ability. Giving it an after affect ability, that causes the units affected by taunt to miss their attacks on other units except MG for a certain duration. General changes: Also, let MG attack air units and let air melee units attack them too. That means Batriders can detonate upon them and gargoyles can attack them too. Without the club, MGs remain the way they are, but with clubs, they can target air units as well, gain small splash damage on attacks. POTM Changes: SEARING ARROW CHANGES Option 1: AOE affect: Since it has a fire affect, let it immolate the target for sometime, dealing small aoe damage affect like the lightning shield. Option 2: Nuking potential: Increase the cooldown of searing arrows, make it immolate the target, dealing larger initial damage, and boosting magical attack damage and spell damage against the target. Manaburn, shadow strike, searing arrow, and entangling roots can give NE much needed nuking potential without relying on tavern heroes. Option 3: Support role : Make the searing arrows immolate target, making range attacks do more damage to the target for a certain duration. Keep the current initial damage, Increase cooldown and mana cost. That makes POTM shine more when combined with ranged units, with both searing arrows and trueshot. Owl changes: Owl comes permanently with POTM. stays permanently unless shot down. You cannot scout with it, but stays above POTM. Yes it can be killed by any ranged unit or hero attack. and it is not in user control. It automatically respawns after a set time upon being killed. Initially, it increases sight radius of POTM. 1st level Owl increases the attack range of POTM (Also applies to searing arrow).Second level owl increases POTM attack range further, third level owl gains invisibility detection and further increases POTM attack range. Trueshot Aura: Passive ability that increases the attack speed and/or damage of ranged units the longer they focus fire on one unit. Has a damage and attack speed cap. That applies to POTM herself.
For Frost Armor on the Lich, I think the best way to handle levelling the skill up is probably mana cost, duration and cooldown. Essentially making it more economical for the lich to maintain frost armor on more of their units. Like... Imagine if the level 3 frost armor had a mana cost of 10 and no cooldown... that way the lich that's invested in frost armor can maintain it on their entire army and also fight against dispel to some extent... while also justifying the ability having an autocast. It's a much more useful metric to adjust frost armor around than just boosting the armor it provides, anyway.
Note: Lich doesn't cast his spells fast enough for the cooldown buff on the Frost Armor to actually matter (unless we are speaking shift clicking) Autocast and manual cast wouldn't be affected by a cooldown buff
Mountain Giant - act like a tree, blocking vision Potm - Replace owl with Elunes Arrow from dota, Replace Searing arrow with anything (poison arrow same as orb of venom but stronger on lvl 3, leadership passive, healing - tyrande, some kind of mark - choose a favorite enemy etc.)
For Mountain Giants, I think the solution is *far easier* than inventing a new ability. Instead of giving them taunt, just copy-paste Thunder Clap from the Mountain King and tweak the numbers for a basic unit ability. This lets the Giant protect his backline by slowing the enemy, giving them more room to kite. It synergizes with both bears and archers as both benefit from slowed enemies, both in taking less damage from attacks and allowing them to avoid or approach vulnerable targets. It also has the diminishing returns of multiple mountain giants that you're looking for and makes them much harder to ignore individually.
Btw, Mountain giants taunt can still be tweaked a little and the concept of MGs as a tank can still be realized. Imagine this, Taunt makes enemy units target it like it does now, but also debuffs those units with 30% attack miss chance on every other units except MG itself for like 7 seconds. 4 seconds on heroes. Cooldown to about 20 seconds, that would make it useful. Stackable upto maximum 50% miss chance with multiple MGs.
One idea with mountain giants is to let them attack air units as well in club mode. They are literally giants. Also let the air melee units like gargoyles auto acquire MGs as a target. That way MGs combined with hippogryphs can be both viable against undead? Also taunt can be good that way to allow hipogryphs one or more few hits because of the tiniest disruption.
@@AnonYmous-spyonmepls Haha, that's creative. But it would be easy to just get out of the range and leave MG with archers alone, like they do now with MGs. If MGs can attack air, in melee with a club or at range otherwise and could attract melee air units with taunt, that would synergize well with hippos as well as hippo riders.
I like that idea, expand their utilization. I also think taunt outta be a shorter range spell that lasts 2-3 seconds instead of an one-time effect. (This in turn would make them viable throughout all skill levels.)
I was thinking of a spell for POTM and this is what I came up with: Spell would replace searing arrow (which doesn't even really fit night elf lore because they don't generally set things on fire.) Spell would be called something like Enchant or Moons blessing or something along those lines. Spell would be used to enchant units to gain the positive effects of magic damage. Spell would be cast on units with an area of effect circle, circle would increase in size per level. Initial length of enchant would be 15 secs increasing by 15 secs per level. Positive effect of magic damage does not replace piercing damage so units under the effect would be more effective against heavy armor units while also retaining their bonuses to light armor etc. Imagine a group of archers being able to cut through heavy armor units like butter. Effect on unit looks similar to a purple star fall glow hovering over their weapon. Mana cost maybe the same as frost armor?
Buff Ult of Starfall from channelling ability to enhance attack type of ability. Upon cast, within next 15 secs, PotM's basic attack is split into 3 with 66% on main arrow, 33% on the other 2. Item effects are 33% less effective on non-main arrow. Each basic attack of PotM is followed by a single star fall 1.5 secs after the previous attack hit the enemy unit. This would increase DPS by PotM but reduces its potential to be abused when PotM starts abusing attack speed items and buffs by her ult. Searing arrows was supposed to be a "star". So i think dealing massive damage already is good for PotM and makes sense.
@@bigrodbrowny9184 to level 5 is an interesting idea since it creates a choice between ult and level 3 main skill... However, I think it will introduce a swarm of balancing issues with heros with strong ult, like DH, panda, Alchemist, Dark Ranger. Just imagine the horror of metamorphasis in every night elves game... I feel like it might be to huge of a change at this stage of the game
Grubby, you failed to mention that NElf has ONLY 2 ways to detect invisible units (that are not external, like Dusts or Laboratories): Huntress' Sentinel, which has a single charge (and lasts for 5 min), is visible and can only be placed on trees (not just anywhere). And the other one is the Owl Scout, which locks you into a specific hero, requires an ability point investment AND you want to nerf with your proposed changes. If anything, I feel like NElf needs a BUFF to their invisibility detection, not a further nerf... the Sentinel could be cooldown based, instead of being a single charge, for example. Or they could get something brand new, that doesn't require a specific hero.
This is a very solid suggestion, one I haven't ever considered. When you explain it that way, even the Huntress is a underutilized unit that doesn't see much play... And Sentinel is also immobile, very rigid, and inflexible. Out of curiosity, what would you suggest should be a reasonable fix for it?
@@Shaeamful here are some options on how to fix it: A) Refresh the huntress' Sentinel charge whenever her current one expires or is destroyed (when the tree is destroyed) B) Give Sentinel a 3 minute cooldown (in line with the Mortar team and Arcane towers' reveal cooldown) C) Allow Sentinel to be cast onto Ancient Protectors (or maybe Ancients in general), and make it permanent when used this way. D) Rework fairy fire to be manual cast, with AoE and much higher mana cost. E) Add a T3 upgrade, which makes wisp detonation reveal invisible units in the area around their targeted spot. F) Give Druids of the Talon a passive reveal, when thy are in their bird form. Maybe after their master upgrade.
What about giving druid of the talon bird form true sight ? Since they are so rare this can potentially be a reason to even get them having one or two in the air like how human keep a couple flying machines with them sometimes to sweep/steal sentry wards
@@Khantia I actually really like the idea of option F, or potentially E! E conditionally, if Wisps just were given True Sight instead upon the upgrade (I feel like True Sight on detonate would just be a worse Dust)
Love your talks Grubby, hope this gets considered by Blizzard. Especially the wand of negation change, and in general seeing more T3+ units would be cool!
For POTM i would like to see Searing Arrows replaced with an actual "priestess" themed ability. Perhaps some kind of "mark of elune" ability that would apply a Heal or Damage over-time effect to a friendly/enemy target, along with a movement speed buff/debuff. Something to actually play into POTM's theme of being a PRIESTESS, instead of just an archer that tosses stars in 4v4.
Backpack update is OUTSTANDING idea. Opens up a whole new layer of play. With people trying to catch each other backpack carries etc. and picking up items leading to awesome situations. Imagine a situation human vs undead where undead steals staff of preservation and human steals orb of corruption. It will be possible with this although super rare
On the point of your PotM suggestion, I think a lot of Warcraft heroes could use a mini rework. Like is there ever a place for Thorns Aura realistically. The point of having 3 abilities is that it's genuinely meant to enable choice in how you play the hero. Much like how the Shadow Hunter is by far one of the best designed heroes because all his skills are super useful and every level you get on him (except for his terrible ultimate) is a skill point you are happy to get. But it would just be outside the scope of what the Reforged team is committed to fixing. Which is almost nothing. Had Reforged been a success, I have no doubt we would finally have seen new hero abilities and maybe even new heroes, perhaps in a new "reforged" play mode. Alas. Just to dive a little deeper into this topic for those interested in this kind of ramble: I would have loved to see the game rebalanced/reworked around healthier game mechanics and more useful hero abilities. Like Staff of Preservation was basically Blizzard saying "alright Night Elf doesn't have any good healing abilities and they're not getting it with the Warden, so we're just gonna give them an item that covers that hole." But it's super unsatisfying as a mechanic. Night Elf combat has become "Hey my units are gonna disappear constantly in a flash of light if you haven't managed to kill any of my 2-3 heroes with a staff on it, including each other." You try to catch a unit and focus it down only for it to get instantly teleported to safety. That does not feel "Night Elfish" at all. Why not instead rework the PotM to have a "Light of Elune" ability instead of Scout Owl that heals allies and damages enemies at night to play into the Night advantage theme. Instead of Searing Arrows, have "Sacred Arrows" that heal a nearby unit for the same amount of bonus damage. Then remove or severely nerf Staff. I would put SO MUCH MORE weight on the night itself, making Moonstone and playing around time of day a huuuge part of their play style. It's really unique, and you already have an item that helps navigate that weakness to an extent. Where you want to siege the Elf during the day, and the Elf wants to siege you during the night. And you have to try and account for the day cycle when creeping. Put the "Night" into Night Elf so to speak.
I thought of some possible ideas for Mountain Giants the other day while pondering about this video. I noticed how tall Mountain Giants are while watching a replay and had some ideas. I am curious what your thoughts are: 1) What if Mountain Giants could also attack Air Units given how tall they are? Or perhaps only when they have a Tree Club? Either option means either Normal or Siege Attack damage so who knows how that may or may not be good/bad. 2) Or maybe instead, what if they had a move that pulls/knocks down air units so that other ground melee units can attack said "knocked down" unit for a duration or something. Maybe the knocked down unit even has some sort additional debuff during this duration to further make MG's have more utility without making Taunt more OP.
Instead of fiddling with control magic numbers (other units are also affected) maybe wards could die in X hits but have hp for control magic or if that isn't possible due to coding issues. Maybe just extreme negative armor is enough for one shot or negative mg passive that "adds" dmg to hits
Actually not a bad suggestion! It'd be easily done with minimal extra coding needed for Blizzard, too. Just use Hardened Skin reduce all damage to 1, and copy & paste a portion of the Berserk ability code into a passive ability (the part that increases damage taken). I think the negative armor would look pretty shoddy (which the polish in aesthetic and user interface is definitely part of Warcraft III's charm). My only issue with the HP concept would be readability for newer players who aren't aware of the passive... But that's a rather small issue, especially if this would be back-ported to affect all Ward-type units consistently across the board.
@@sebastiansalinas2336 You still want dispels to work against them. Dispels are a general counter to any persistent magical effect. It would be strange and hard to understand for new players if there was a specific subtype of summoned units that ignored magic.
For control magic units like wards: they could have negative baseline armor (-5 for eg) and more health. 1 peasant could still 1shot them because of the damage amplification of negative armor. It's a weird hack but it would work. You can actually do this to any extent, the armor dmg reduction formula scales the same way in every direction.
If we're replacing Taunt on Mountain Giant, I'd suggest that they be given a skill that passively diverts some amount or all of enemy-source projectiles that could target the Giant to the Mountain Giant like a magnet, whether arrows, or single target abilities with a projectile like Storm Bolt. I think you could pretty safely greatly increase Glaive Thrower movement speed, but also reduce the Turn Rate of the glaive throwers at the same time. I think a lot of the siege units that have four wheels but no steering mechanisms could act this way.
I think when it comes to the Chimeras and Frost Wyrms (and previously Tauren long ago when walkers built from spirit lodge and tauren totem was t3) it would be interesting if the Boneyard and Chimera Roost were tech buildings that had some t3.5 unit upgrades, so building them has a purpose beyond just producing their one elite unit and didn't telegraph to your opponent that you were for sure making those units, but you still have the ability to throw one out there at any point so the opponent always has to be ready for it.
Sacrificial Pit that only produces those Shades... Bone yard that only produces Frost Wyrms... Chimera Roost that only produces Chimera. I think Chimera Roost needs to be tier 2, Chimera still tier 3, add new unit of a hatchling chimera... When reached tier 3, you can research or just after upgrading ToA to ToE a hatchling swap to a normal chimera. same with frost wyrms.
Bulwark could also be similar to spirit link. After activation x percent of all damage received by units in range gets transferred to the mountain gaint. and you can toggle it on & off, maybe with cooldown. a possible counter would then be a lot of aoe damage. like when the nightelf brings out mountain giants and you counter with aoe damage, it should be balanced so that the giants can't just be counter healed with rejuv.
Wellmade video Manuel, i dont care about details, i just love the discussions still going on with this game that i grow up with. Perfect for me today, having a cold while its raining outside
Maybe witch doctors should be able to cast all 3 totems when they pop out of spirit lodge, but effect of their totems should be reduced ? : -sentry ward last 3 minutes on novice -> on adept last 5 minutes -> on master 7 minutes -stasis trap stun 2 sec (or ms and as slow instead of stun, something like thunder clap, however with uprgading doctors it would change back to stun?) on novice -> on adept a little bit longer stun/slow duration -> on master duration of stun increased a little bit -healing wards duration and area of effect on novice would be smaller, so it can only heal up to a few units, and increase its mana cost to 200, so each witch doctor on novice can cast only 1 healing totem at the start -> increase the area of effect and increase witch doctors mana pool/increase its mana regen (slightly more than it is now) on adept -> on master training increase its area of effect and (or maybe keep it as it is and just change the %healing/sec to 1% on novice -> 1.5% on adept -> 2% on master with 150 mana cost at and range at all levels? ) so witch doctors would get some new possible ways to be used in mid game instead of just placing sentries all around the map Also, maybe the wards should have permanent spell immunity /or extra upgrade that gives them spell immunity requiring t3 ( 75/125 ? ) so they can be only physically killed instead being taken away by spell breakers or some other dispells ? if something seems op or super bad I would like to know why
I like where this idea is going. Upgrade the power of all three spells, make them fairly weak at level 1, not a bad suggestion at all. Main problem is no other race has a caster like that, do they? Kind of makes them look like heroes for that. Although I would argue it would be nice if Priests got a similar treatment. Probably wouldn't be too hard to figure out other units that could benefit from this...even the Druid of the Talon is notoriously weak in Crow Form and could use some upgrades to make that form hit harder I suppose. As for Undead well, Necromancer and Banshee it's a coin flip as far as I'm concerned, I tend to use Necromancers more, so I'm more inclined to think it would be better for Banshees, it would help with the other viewer's idea of letting Banshees posssess workers at tier 2...perhaps that's the best choice for Undead if every race had one of those spell upgrade styles.
Really!? Beastmaster Hawk no mention? Otherwise loved every minute of this 🙏 Ah and Pitlord Rain of Fire sees 0 play aswell and needs to be buffed to be atleast same cooldown and manacost as blizzard Pitlords ultimate summon Doomguard should also have the same ms as the Dreadlords Infernal!
I think human non-power build expo should be buffed. Since late game the clock is often human's big enemy, it would be nice to have the option of building another townhall without fear of death of few remaining peasants and snowball into lumberstuckness. It already feels off that lategame vs NE human generally falls off, as levels a lot of times aren’t achieved as fast as DH/Panda for example, and then they also often get their expos up rather easily. I know it’s a fine line, but it would be great to have even less timing dependent matchups and more diverse late stage matches. Edit: maybe make having a Castle allow faster single worker build time of Townhalls
Why not buff abos regeneration speed to some noticeable value when wanting to increase their base stats - this would nicely fit into the units storytelling and also make them a little bit more unique.
My suggestions: Magic Immune Units now take 90% reduced damage from Magic Damage Attacks rather than straight up immunity. Still remain spell immunity. Spell immune Units remain very good in all situations, and several greatly out preform all other units. This change still keeps them as an incredible hard counter, but not an invincible one. Also has the same benefit of giving High Templars an attack in sc2, lets them stop with the army rather than moving forward and dying against a group of all magic immune units. Priestess of the Moon Owl Scout: Renamed Guardian Owl: No longer Immune to damage, but tanky, phases from play like faerie dragon for 10s when hit. Gives nearby night elves a 20/40/60% damage boost on their first attack out of shadowmeld can only apply once per 20s per unit. Level 2 applies buffs sentinels to give the same boost to nearby units. Level 3 allows a 15 second moonstone effect to apply to the map. While Guardian Owl is out, Priestess of the Moon can shadowmeld during daylight. Upon Expiring duration or using an ability, if sentinel is researched adds a sentinel owl to a nearby tree. Priestess of the Moon: Immolation Arrow Removed. Replaced by Moonfire. 1 Second Cooldown Damage + dot ability. Can be set to auto-cast where she will prioritize hitting targets without the dot. Basically, to allow orb of venom use without penalty, as this would not affect auto attacks. Hippogriffs movement speed increased to 410 from 400. This change makes the slightly faster than 400 flying machines. Hippogriff Riders increased to 365 from 350 to give them a small buff while still keeping them slower than gargoyles. Frostwyrm Upgrade Icebolt: Allows Frostwyrms to hit Magic Immune Units for Half the Frostwyrm's Normal Damage. Enemies killed by Frostwyrms with this upgrade become frozen corpses blocking pathing, and preserving the corpse for triple the normal duration. Icebolt created corpses can be Possessed by Banshees (also DOOM, Transmute, and charm) and create full health 0 mana units.) 150/225 Cost Upgrade, 60s research time. (The magic damage is a serious suggestion, the rest is rule of cool.) Abomination: Cannibalizing while at full health Will now overheal the abomination for 100 extra hit points that can last up to 1 minute. Summon Skeleton: Skeletons summoned give half exp to heroes over level 5. This is to preserve their effectiveness later into the game where due to being low hp summons they are disproportionately weak compared to other higher tier units vs higher level heroes. Crypt Lord: Passive Spiked Carrapacy: Also spawns locusts when using Impale or Upon Carrion Bettle Death with this passive. Locusts Can now Overheal Cryptlord giving him temporarily bonus health. New Item: It would be cool to have an item to force a kodo to regurgitate an devoured unit to either kill it, or as a count to your own units being devoured. Don't have a name for it besides Bag of Smell. Control Groups are made Visible in the Interface. Like sc2. Hotkey set up changed from "modify" a text file/select "grid" to a built in UI like SC2, with an improvement over the current SC2 in that you can choose in that For Grid Hotkeys you can decide where abilities are placed on the Grid. A "Select all Summons" Universal Control Group similar to SC2s select all army, or select all Warpgates feature. Unit Selection Cap increased from 12 to 100 as an option. This is one thing they said they would AT LEAST TRY when they advertised wc3 reforged and they never even tried. If SC2 and games inspired by SC2 are the main source for new players in the RTS genre, then it is very hard for those players to grow accustomed to the much harder unit control.
Here's an idea I got about human fast expansion rebalance; Limit the number of peasants able to powerbuild a structure to 4. This takes the 5-peasant townhall build from 55sec to 68sec. That's perhaps a bit too harsh of a nerf, so let's reduce the base time by 10sec, 180s -> 170s, this reduces the 4-peasant powerbuild to 64 seconds. That's a 9 second increase to the TH build time but frees 1 peasant to build a tower or whatever, or if an invading enemy opts to try killing the peasants human gets a "1 peasant buffer" to their maximum build speed.
You're still the best at being able to convey high-level commentary, bub. You really did cover everything. Appreciate you recognizing that there are players of all levels. And that balance changes as a whole should be geared towards the pro scene. I know this game. And love playing it. But I simply cannot move fast enough to execute what I want during large fights. I know to micro away the unit being targeted but just can't do it quick enough. I guess all those decades playing side scrollers is showing itself. Or maybe I simply don't know the right mechanics. Like why cycle through all your ctrl groups all the time? Is it a movement thing? I still don't know. As you can imagine, it's quite frustrating. After a while, you come to accept it. Still believing one day there might be a breakthrough in your understanding, so the gameplay actually matches what you want to do. Loved the MG discussion. And as probably the only fool who is an "expert" on the damn unit. Sure, let's give it a try. I'm still going to use them. Because as much as I'd love to get bears and go from rejuve to bear form and back like Kaho. You already know the first time you do that, you're going to lose half your army because it literally takes your fingers 10 seconds to find the buttons. "Something need doing? Work, work."
I wish they gave Orcs back the Ogres like in WC2. They need more Tier 3 stuff. Maybe some kind of 'Horde Induction' upgrade at Great Hall that gives them ability to make Ogres at Barracks, and ability to upgrade them to Ogre Magi at Spirit Lodge?
I feel like arcane tower hero feedback nerf is good, piercing damage could be slightly buffed, nothing too crazy, like +2 maybe. You could argue that it’s too strong against unarmored units with a mana pool then, so you could just reduce feedback damage generally and buff piercing damage slightly. Seems a bit weak against dryads and quite strong against talons atm for example
Frost Armor Cooldown from 2s to 5s/3s/1s in addition to your changes could be a nice way to further incentivize it and be more balanced Also what about Wind Riders to Tier 3 with some extra buffs to compensate?(but keep the other changes you suggested as well) Mountain Giant in addition to your suggestions could have some kind of very small area slight movement speed slow for ground units(to represent them shaking the ground as they stomp around and maybe give them a small aoe buff for only friendly ground units to have ranged attacks against them to have something like a 30% miss chance(to represent how big they are, and blocking line of sight to these units(you could also make them interfere with line of sight like terrain does, to slightly interfere with targeting, which could be really interesting) Maybe allow their club upgrade to enable attacking air units, but with a 50% miss chance Saw some people saying Humans didn't get anything fun, so my suggestions are: a Tier 3 upgrade that makes Footmen stronger somehow(maybe like the Champion unit that's in the game) Maybe give Knights 'Paladin Initiation', giving them Priest Heal, but much much less mana, and faster cast time, and slight magic resistance(10% maybe?) also a Tier 3 upgrade Some kind of upgrade for Steam Tank, not sure what, but they're just bad. Maybe some slight buffs to stats, but perhaps some kind of resource harvesting bonus? Similar to Goblin Shredder or something like that. Just some thoughts
for frostarmor scaling argument, there are other abilities which are fine at level 1: 1. Hex. Strongest control available in the game, even stronger than stun as it prevents gaining experience, removes abilities (even auras and evasion), making unit even less protected while disabled. Longs much longer than typical stuns. Can be dispelled (which makes it perfectly fine having 1 point in it - already extremely strong); 2. Divine shield. One of the strongest abilities in the game, for 50 mana grant 15 second (big invul potion) of invulnerability (self dispell also), being able to drink manapots etc synergies well also. Leveling up prolongs duration, but also increase cooldown time, so it's fine to have 1 point in it. 3. Silence. Even it increase aoe and duration a bit, still the main effect is to break channeling spells or prevent enemy hero to use heal in the next 1-2 seconds or force invul potion/dispel. Lich is already extremely hungry for exp and levels, as all 3 his abilities are vital for ud to survive. And all of them being nerfed. One of the abilities is dark ritual - is just utility to sustain nova usage, already have big cometition vs frostarmor, dalaying picking armor at level 6 in most scenarios. I say there is no need to scale frost armor to even lesser usage.
also, windwalk is another already extremely strong ability at level 1. It already grants undispellable invis, walk-through ability and even ms. If you donw go for extra duration/30 phys damage, like If plan to skill mirror image (orc vs orc/human/elf) - he can stay at level 1 ww perfectly fine and go for crits+mirror maxed next.
When I see Sundering Blades I want it to be a non-stacking (with itself) minus-armor debuff on hit to Medium/heavy/fortified armor units (Not buildings.) I think a little extra damage against one armor type is not only boring, but hard to justify researching in many games even if you're getting a lot of knights. For a lot of units that get specific upgrades like this one, it can be a really transformative one, like researching Web or bouncing hammers or something like that, you're getting a really strong upgrade for the unit that almost always does something.
39:40 "It is a fact that no Orc has ever expanded in a competitive game and made that work. It just doesn't work, it gets canceled too easily." If you define "worked" as in the strategy was beneficial to him winning, then "[HU] Fortitude vs Lyn [ORC] - WB Final - Warcraft 3 All-Star League Season 1 Monthly 1" played just about a month ago, on March 31, 2024 counts. Lyn fast expanded and though it did get canceled he drew attention from Fortitude (the best Human player in the world in Grubby's own recent words), in my book any strategy that improves your position works. Starcraft 1 has certain styles of bunker rushing Zerg as Terran, and even if your entire army and SCVs die, you might still end up with an advantage. And that is just 1 example I could find, I remember Orcs Tier1 expanding vs UD/HU on certain maps from almost 20 years ago. 11:55 Why do you keep getting basic mechanics wrong very often? "Tree of Life is 120 seconds" What's missing here is that "Entangle gold mine" takes 60 seconds, therefore making it the same 180 seconds as a Human's expansion, but NE obviously can't powerbuild, making it strictly worse.
Adding new skills to old heroes is indeed a nice thing, Very, Very cool, hope we see more of that, with beastmaster for example, with many other heroes, Bloodmage really needs his fire to be instant, that would 100% put him back in the game, and he would be STRONG for that, just, throw the fire and keep walking, like, as fast of a cast as a stormbolt or something like that.
Grubby I think you’re really undervaluing the cost to the NE player to take a PotM and the Owl skill. That’s an entire hero slot that they can never use for anything else, at least one level where they contribute nothing more than they did the level before, less xp for their other heroes nearby, etc... It’s a real cost. How many reveals could they buy from the goblin lab for even just the same gold cost? Like 5? And any one of those scans could win them the game on the spot, if they’re lucky. I also thought it was interesting that you didn’t mention Farsight in that section, since it’s a very similar skill (and on a more popular hero no less). What’s the counter play against Farsight? It doesn’t even cost mana, so you can’t even mana burn the farseer forever to keep him from using it.
I believe with how expensive wind rides are a good buff will be to reduce their population cost from 4 to 3. On compensation they could reduce they dmg a little bit, this will be more in par with Humans dragonhawk riders (trading dmg vs utility) and put the evenomed spears as a tier 3 upgrade.
15:38 About the bloodmage flamestrike cancellation, I think Blizzard should set the channel time to whenever a clear visual indicator appears, like the time when the green circular mark on the ground appear. Right now the problem to me is that the (cancellable) channeling time is a random time that doesn't match any clear visual or audio indicator, which is unintuitive, and an un-fun skill check. I remember when I first played bloodmage, I would buffer movement/cancel the spell after I hear the audio and see the green mark on the ground. However, this timing will lead to a cancel.
okay here you go, you keep the ring of protection, but its a goblin shop item. it starts at +2. an upgrade. then you can take it to your race's blacksmith and level it up with different costs and effect based on race (im assuming even leveling would break balance)
I might be wrong, but I'd like to see some tier 3 buff for rifles, I feel like 1 base t3 strat will become viable again. The buff could be "a double barrel" which allows you to switch to mode when you shoot from distance 400 but with splash damage mechanic wise like Flak Canons, numbers can be tweaked. And the point is you can switch back to 600 range and single target damage. This would give some flexibility to rifles
The Tauren suggests ive been saying haha. Without coding, the Tauren minimum speed could be floored at 220 which is the same speed as the common "Slow" speed units. Other random changes I thought of is making burning oil not harm your own units (since frag shards doesn't harm either), following consistent logic. Flame Strike: should have a drastically reduced cast time, but less damage/cost. Usability buff would be great here. It's effectively a worse nova. Flying Machine: I think they don't need as much single target DPS if their main purpose is AOE. Breakers should have movespeed reduced to 270 from 300. Too effective at approaching key units, and can out-run mostly all the normal damage units that supposedly counter them. For Witch Doctor I think changing Stasis trap from 7 to 4 sec delay, and lower to 2(1) second stun could REALLY make them more usable without the noob-stomping properties it currently has. - The significance of the 4 second delay is that you can pre-cast them when an enemy TPs in, and they can get hit by them reliably without too oppressive of a stun. - Sentry Wards can have way less duration as it is technically op - Healing Wards could have less cost, less duration proportionately. The 30 sec duration is usually wasted and is bad for topping off HP, but great for wounded units. I think Frost armor doesn't need that change because Frost Nova already provides the slow buff in an aoe, slows ranged units, and requires the conscious decision to focus the unit with the buff, with melee. It is arguably worse than Devotion aura in every way, but I think that is okay because Frost Nova is so strong. I think 3/6/9 or 2/5/8 should be the change imo. Death and Decay shouldn't hurt your own units. I think friendly fire is a bit outdated but neccesary for spells like Blizzard, being such a low cost spell. Volcano doesn't have friendly fire anymore, therefore I think DnD shouldn't either.
Alt to replacing Mountain giant Taunt (as you said it's effective at low levels of play and has a purpose there) but maybe add an effect to Taunt that gives affected enemy units something like -35% miss chance on attacking any unit other than MG units for 3-5 seconds. This puts the decision on switching targets on the opponent and is a bit more clear in intent and in line with the spirit of what the design concept was rather than a standard ally buff buffing.
I think it would be cool to add value to tier 3.5 buildings by adding some upgrades. For example, could be cool if Boneyard had some upgrades for skeletons. Maybe +health, maybe +magic res (so wisps no longer one shot), +range for skeltal mage. Or an upgrade for wyrms to be able to “shed” bones in flight or on use ability, generating corpses like meat wagons.
I can get behind making PotM a more interesting hero. The attack bonuses of leap feel a bit weak, maybe make the 2 charges of a single leap cast stack with eachother. How do you feel about Trueshot Aura? I always hated how it's the only heroic aura in the game that can be replicated by units. Upgraded Kodo gives 20% attack bonus to ALL units, not just ranged. Same with Roar that gives 25% attack bonus to all units, yes at a mana cost but it makes Trueshot Aura feel like such an underpowered ability. It's hard to rework it without having it overlap with another aura in the game or turning it crazy strong in team games. I had the idea of giving it an additional effect of giving ranged attacks a X%/2X%/3X% chance to ignore their target's armor reduction for the same amount. Death and Decay is BAD, have it heal, instead of damage, non-structure friendlies in its AoE for 2% HP per second.
Dear Grubby! Suggestion for Priestess of the Moon: Q - Elune's Judgement: Target unit is marked and provides vision for 15/25/40 sec (5/8/12 heroes) and takes % increased damage (10%/20%/30%) W- Elune's Shroud - Remove debuffs and conceal the Priestess for 3/4/5 sec, gain 15/25/35 move speed. Attacking makes her visible (ultimate or casts do not) E- Same Ult - Same Numbers are guesstimates. The Owl was and is lame. Elune's judgement provides single target dps that searing arrows gave but works in theme of her needing an army, helps creep slightly and retains the vision aspect from owl. Provides counterplay to Blademaster windwalk harass. Elune's Shroud provides a defensive tool for the hero, in line with her thematic. Most importantly if invested into allows for setup and use of ult, which is the coolest part of the hero that is never seen in competitive play. Opponents must invest into detection to have counterplay.
@@zdravkodimitrov Hacking is not cool. NE already has various scouting options, plus the proposed change keeps an aspect of scouting/vision. Most importantly I want a combat ability on my Priestess.
Honestly even if i don't play warcraft III really anymore i fully support your work and i think you work hard on this, so i really hope it will impact the future meta of warcraft III !
Instead of Bulwark, perhaps a Cover-style ability would be more suitable. The Mountaint Giant's monstrous size could allow it to shield nearby allies from enemy attacks at the cost of absorbing the damage itself. There'd be tons of possibilities for the exact mechanics of this ability, but it wouldn't have the problem of being 100% counterable with decent APM that its current active ability suffers from.
I've not played this game for 14+ years but I think I can contribute to the discussion. The MG change could be different, lets say 10s duration aura, not 3s, but it does bring down the MG own defences, like -4 armor and -25% magic resistence or a self slow, or something that the other player needs to make a decision: Or a focus the MG down or I kill it's allies.
I'll give my rambling thoughts on some of these changes (the particularly exciting ones) but first, I thought it would be good for clarity to mention that I have been playing WC3 since 2004 -- however -- most of my experience with the game is through the Editor, and Custom Games... *NOT* melee, even if I find it very interesting. The Wand of Negation change to require Temple of the Damned was actually what made me decide to actually comment... So I'm actually going to respond to that, first. I actually *love* this idea. Furthermore, I find it so exciting that I'd actually love to see the concept expanded to other races for them to have unique items which are unlocked by Arcane Sanctum/Spirit Lodge/Ancient of Lore. But even if that doesn't happen, I still find this extremely exciting. Or -- perhaps if we wanted to take the idea asymmetrically; perhaps instead of a 'caster-building' we put the item requirement as the least used T2 building each race. I was kinda mixed on the idea of the Backpack upgrade on a structure which didn't have any training/upgrading capabilities... However, when I think more on it -- I think this is actually a healthy change. It could take the place of 0,0 on the command card and shift the items over. Perhaps if the idea of each race having a 'caster building' item is taken into consideration, they could take the place of 3,1 -- which isn't currently occupied to my knowledge? I'm not really in favor of increasing the power-build time bonus, I think that it's a unique mechanic which I'd hate to see never be utilized. If it was nerfed too significantly without the costs for it being scaled in proportion, I feel like we'd just never see it used. However, I think your proposition for instead increasing the Town Hall build-time would be much preferable. Perhaps this is an overestimation, but I'd say bump it an extra 20 seconds for an even 200; Humans would be strongly incentivized to power-build and it would help balance out the expansions between the races -- maybe? I was a fan of the Sorceress Polymorph buff in the PTR; I think 2 or 2.5 seconds on Heroes would be preferable over 1.5. Perhaps I am overstepping my boundaries when I say this, but I kind of feel like Blizzard immediately nerfing the 3 second debuff duration to 1.5 was an impulsive decision which was spurred on by people complaining too quick, and being aversed to change. However, I do think Polymorph being usable on Heroes is, within itself, a good change. I'm definitely in favor of the proposed Masonry change you've suggested, but have no further comments on it. Why not just give Healing Wards (along with all other wards) Spell Immunity? IIRC, don't most spells not work on them anyway, since they're classified as targeted as a ward? Mountain Giants definitely need... Something. The concept of Taunt, like you said, doesn't really work unless you're really bad (which, I feel is discouraging design for newer players -- since the spell specifically targets them and doesn't work on anybody with even a modicum of skill). I'd say either give Taunt a short forced-attack period (to keep the design as-is, allowing them to maintain their niche as it was intended), or, provide them with the ability you'd suggested. Although I'm definitely not as qualified to comment on balance as you are (which is something I've really tried to stress during this whole post), I do feel like +2 Armor and +15% MR is rather small for something meant for an active on-cast ability? Perhaps I'm wrong. If I were designing the ability I'd shoot for +5 Armor, 25% MR -- does NOT affect Mountain Giants (thus, they provide great survivability to everybody, becoming bigger threats and encourage being focused as targets). Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I actually really like the idea of Priestess of the PotM keeping her Searing Arrows ability. I was pretty excited to see it get buffed. I can understand what you mean about the Orb of Venom not working with it, though. I myself, however, would rather see her Searing Arrows to be buffed where they're still a considerable option than it totally be removed. If anything, I'd rather see Owl Scout be removed. I don't think it synergizes with her other abilities and like you suggested, there's no counter-play for it. I also do not think your proposed fix would fix this, but rather, push it into the other direction (too much counter-play). I just think that this ability is inherently flawed conceptually, and there's little that can be done to salvage it -- I've felt that pretty consistently over the course of my experience with the game. I love the idea of slow resistance, however, that would require hard-coding an ability from Blizzard which I suspect won't happen. I think if they were willing though, that would be a much beloved change (as I'm sure several mappers, myself included, would love to see more abilities to play around with... Especially slow resistance which would be particularly difficult to script). Therefore, I think Resistant Skin would be something that could be done with relative ease (perhaps only needing to make a new Icon from Blizzard's end). Still, I like all of your Tauren suggestions across the board. I'm really fond of Tauren as a unit, and even as a race in Warcraft lore... Sucks they're so underwhelming. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think you're attempting to go against your Orc bias too much with the Sentry Ward nerf. I'd say nerf them to 8 minutes, observe and see how the community responds -- if they're viewed as too strong after that, continue towards 7 minutes until it feels appropriate. A 30% duration nerf seems... Pretty drastic. I agree with the abomination change. It's another unit which, again, I find unfortunate doesn't see as much play as it should. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I feel like a damage buff alone wouldn't change that, though. But, perhaps I'm incorrect in that opinion. Huge love for the suggested Master Training changes!! Caster units are extremely fun to watch and play with, and I'd love to see the lesser-utilized casters see more play. I'm in favor of literally all of your suggestions for Frost Wyrms, I'd love to see them utilized more. They're an exceptionally cool unique. I know that it would require some hard-coding on blizzard's end; but it might also be cool to see them have an ability which causes their attacks to either temporarily disable or reduce life regeneration/healing (similar to Ancient Apparition's ult), giving them a new niche. Additionally, the custom mappers would really appreciate having the extra ability to play around with without needing to code it manually. Alright, that's just about enough rambling from me now, lol. Thank you for investing so much time into attempting to improve one of my favorite games, I absolutely love your content. Everything else that I didn't comment on was either positive or I just didn't have enough thoughts or opinions on to give more informed information about -- I'd say almost every change that you suggested though I responded to very positively.
I was also going to comment on Staff of Negation idea, so chose your post to continue on. I don't see the point, it doesn't fit the lore for me. It might work, but the Scourge faction are spell binders. It is like a currency for Scourge to be used and spent. Staff of Negation cancels this notion. Scourge bind spells, not dispell it. It is something other factions would do whereas Scourge would channel it for some other magic. It also breaks the high risk high reward Scourge build tree. I think as it stands, it is the only faction working in The Frozen Throne - no one knows how it works, but it is pretty balanced. The Obsidian Destroyers are the main stay of Tier 3 Scourge roster which counter magic hard. The Staff of Negstion would be too different.
Change proposition for the Frost Wyrm so it can be useful to have just one (as for the Abomination and your proposition for the Mountain Giant): an Anti-Aura that reduces movement speed of enemy units by 5-10%, no reduction in attack speed, doesn't stack with frost movement speed reduction from other Undead units
1:07:20 Revert them back to -1 armor, but also decrease their cost so people sell them less often to get other things, force them to experience their power
I would love to see some more viability of the NE warrior ladies. They have a whole unique upgrade path in the hunter's hall that doesnt go anywhere late game since they fall off so hard. Other races can often have their T1 units scale into end game, but night elves almost always need to transition to the druid path. Maybe a T3 upgrade for huntresses to make them an interesting choice in the later game.
If you reduce the splash damage of flying machines give them either a small hp boost or 1+ singke target damage. You can win the airfight but wont do much damage to ground. Win the airfight with windriders and you damage heroes and ground units. You cant change balance around 4 vs 4.
I would like to see a balance note challenge where people can only make one (maybe two) changes to each race. Promote high impact, easily digestible discourse about the best way to approach individual balance issues. Sometimes it's hard to look past all the potm changes to really imagine how the meta would change.
4:19 - If you wish to bust spellbreaker mirror, then a T2 upgrade (wow human, upgrades, wow) that gives footmen a much better matchup against spellbreakers would likely achieve this. It doesn't have to be a massive steamroll kind of upgrade (so likely just reduced medium damage by a flat amount, or something like that), but the important part is that e.g. with +1 barracks +1 sanctum at t2, you'd be able to hold out until T3 and BTFO the breakers with knights. Footies are cheap and expendable, so if they can hold out long enough for a replacement to come out, they'll do their job even better.
you could make spell brakers have piercing attack instead of normal, so defend works on them. i don't know how it would effect brakers against other things, but I don't think it would be a huge difference
The MG bulwark + 20 hp on hyppos would make gargs vs hyppos battles much more in elf favor than it currently is. The suggestion also needs to define how big is cooldown for the new ability, cause there's a huge possible range to play with.
far sight only reveals a small area for a short period of time, and cannot track an entire army for a long time. It also comptetes with 2 very good and crucial abilities, all owl competes with is searing which is useless after orb anyway.
Give abominations a bleed ability on the opponent or a hook ability of stitches, give tauren's pulverize ability the chance to slow movement speed of nearby enemies but limit its damage to 20 (like a thunder clap), give Grunts bloodrage ability which would make them attack 25% faster but they take 15 damage per second for 5-10 seconds, give archer the scatter shot ability which would attack 3 units at the same time for 2 shots but a long cooldown, those are some abilites I find cool.
I'd like to see more drastic changes: How about making all wards magic immune to boost witch doctor? Makes wards better useable against spell breakers, destroyers, dryads etc but you still counter them by attacking them. Makes attacking them instead of some autocast thing actually counter them and fits in line with serpent ward. How about removing chimaera roost and chimaera come from ancient of wind? Allows for more natural follow-ups to chimaera. How about replacing Potm Scout with the owl ability from Tyrande in Hots. Still scouts but it's a damage ability as well (higher levels let's it pierce one extra target and increases damage). How about changing far seer Far sight to be able to target friendly unit. Gives increased mana regeneration and cooldown reduction for X seconds. Would really be useful if you manage to get a shadow hunter or TC lvl 5 and 'boost' it with your far seer perhaps making shadow hunter first and far seer second better.
Quick notes on the undead suggestions: Lich's Frost Armor only slows melee attackers, so making the level 1 version only provide +1 armor seems pointless against any ranged unit. If you really want to change anything I would suggest tweaking cost and cooldowns so further investment gets the ability cheap and fast, whilst the level 1 version is about as strong but only applied to a couple of units. Speaking of Lich... will anyone protest if Dark Ritual became mana cost free to use? You're meant to recover mana, so you spend some mana to recover some mana. It is already not a priority spell and has a rather hefty cooldown. Abominations. What about making their consume work like NE's Eat Tree? You sling the corpse into the stomach maw and it chews happily along whilst the abomination goes about its day, slaughtering Footmen/Peasants. It would separate it from the Ghoul's version and would make Abominations easier to keep alive during combat, especially if you have some meat wagons with you.
Hey Grubby! I love your video. What do you think about the following idea? ... Searing Arrows get some moderate splash damage to make it more appealing as a first/second hero choice? Obsidian statues get some casting time before they Morph into Destroyers? (3-5 sec) Sundering blades work on 1 more (additional) type of armor like heavy or light? Spirit walkers get moved from Spirit Lodge to Tauren Totems (to avoid total predictability concerning building Taurens) and the building can be built at T2 (but not necessarily the taurens themselves, only walkers)... I mean, technically they are also cows, like Taurens :) :) Thx in advance if you choose to answer! Peace!
So the timing is delicate for Possession; the only reason it would cool to have possession at tier two is you can steal a worker and play two races and at tier 3 its not really viable because the other player has enough resources to keep you from stealing workers, if a carve out was made to possession that allows you to steal a worker but no other units at tier 2 might keep it balanced. The main reason being fun factor, who wouldn't want to try playing two races and it opens up a huge window for different strategies. The only reason i keep bringing it up and I'm an undead main so yeah. :) Also thank you for adding sections for the different races, I watched up to night elf, then noticed the sections and skipped to undead.
Hey legend, I like lots of your changes, although I dislike the small number tweaks and nerfs that reduce the skill cap, so I have a few of my own: - I would not change any of the numbers of Ghoul Frenzy, but I would add a passive 10% damage taken increase to the upgrade. People would still be able to micro them due to no movement speed reduction, Ghouls would still have the same potential damage output due to no attack speed reduction, but you would potentially reduce their damage output by giving the opponent chance to counterplay. Somewhat inspired by Troll Berserker activatable ability. - I would leave Taurens a T3, leave their numbers as is, but I would remove the autoattack and make Pulverize their autoattack. Scale the damage of the Pulverize with Melee Weapon upgrades. Change the Pulverize upgrade to provide 100 more AoE and 20% 2 second slow on impact. This would play into the role of tanky AoE damage dealers, that even if crowd controlled can make the impact in their role. Would this make them too strong vs lower tier ground units, YES it would and it should. 1 Tauren should make the difference when fighting 8-10 ghouls and skeletons, or archers or whatever. Would this make Taurens too strong in large numbers, well arguably they are too strong in large numbers currently as well, it is just that it is hard to get there, while opponent still continues to make the unit composition that is bad vs large amounts of Taurens. - I would make Grunt Berserker Strength upgrade apply on Wind Riders as well. Slightly more love towards Wyverns, in a spirit of Animal War training.
I just want to bring up a point that HU also has only 1 source of dispell. So, it's not that 1 source of dispell is necessarily an issue for the UD. It is that it comes to late into the game. Maybe make a research for statues to be able to dispell? It would cement them as an even more staple unit, but I think there would still be place for the Destroyer as it is a fighting, flying, magic immune unit and Statue is just a supporting unit.
31:00 As for Mountain Giants, maybe a damage share ability? For X Seconds the damage the friendly unit receives is split between the MG and the unit. Adjust the ratio for balance.
20:40 I just had a little thought regarding control magic vs witch doctors: maybe you could nerf it a little by letting you leech of the benefit from the effect of a healing ward for example, making it heal friend and foe alike, so that the Orc player may decide of he wants to destroy it himself when the enemy benefits more from it than he is. No idea how that would play out in pvp matches, but it sounds neat in my head at least.
After I saw how low you ranked NE heroes, it surprised me how little balance you proposed for them (me crying because NE are the weakest 😢). For the PotM, as another comments suggested, replacing Searing arrow with a healing arrow or something similar to DN's Coil seems interesting and more Priestessly. For the MG, I think a good replacement for Taunt could be an Outrage, like Pit Lord's Howl of Terror. It helps protecting your units and makes sense because if you see a giant roaring, you get intimidated. Also attacking flying units with the club sounds hilarious. For KotG, maybe replacing Thorns Aura with an AoE attack can reduce the need of relying on Tavern heroes. Finally, letting Chimeras attack flying units or at least making them more tanky makes sense.
I feel like instead of going the Mirana route , they could fuse searing arrow and aura a single ability with a passive and active aspect to it , turn down the damage back to 10 20 30 and give potm a new ability , make her tiger roar buffing nearby units with movement speed and attack speed to hasten retreat and help archers move around the map and kite a little bit better since they get stuck on everything including themselves for some reason unless you are applying micro on them constantly, something like 20 25 and 30% movement speed 10 15 20% attack speed for 5 7 10 seconds? numbers can be played with but yeah, Potm needs a rework
Theoretical question: How would impact the game's balance if you had a T3 "Backpacks lvl2" research that was really expensive (say 300g / 200l) that allowed units to use the items they carry, but all effects from said items are cut in half in terms of effects and duration? Which race would benefit most from this, given their shops? Which units would benefit most from this? Also, a bit of a challenge: Also, I would like to see you in a match in which both players are limited in the following way: You start the match with 100 Actions, you get 10 Actions every 10 seconds. You lose one every time you order a unit or group of units to Move, Attack or Cast a spell. Selecting units/buildings, training, rally point and research do not count as Actions. If you run out of Actions, your units will not obey new commands, but will continue with whatever they were ordered. (Say you order a pack of ghouls to move from A to B, and run out of actions, but you see an enemy scout on the way and order to attack, the ghouls will simply ignore the order and continue their move command) Essentially it forces the player to play on low APM for most of the match and think carefully what to do at any given time. Do I run as smoothly as possible while running on fumes, or do I play slowly and pool my actions for decisive engagements?
Archmage changes: If the Archmage uses too many Mass Teleport's to their home base, Blizzard will change to waves of firing, for which anyone friendly unit caught within will be transmuted, but the gold gained will be pilfered by goblin sappers.
I have a suggestion for channeled ultimates. Have them continue for 1-3 seconds after being CC'd, but stopped instantly if the hero is ordered to move. This makes stopping them a priority, but you still gain some measure of benefit from using them. I think especially for Tornado, Stampede, and Volcano this could make them a much higher priority for picking.
No, but it also feels terrible for a stampede to end with one lizard on the field, or a volcano with one rock. Maybe a counter could be that the cooldown is reduced and mana partially refunded if it's canceled by your opponent within the first few seconds? It's a huge opportunity cost to take the skills, let alone the mana cost. The risk is all on the using player.
I disagree with the suggested Ring of Protection nerf. They finally became valuable - 2 or 3 rings on your hero actually do something now. Plus they actually do help creeping - but they make it cheaper, not faster. The Ring of Protection finally became worth of investing an inventory slot into and nerfing it back to "just sell it right away" thing doesn't make sense to me.
I would actually slightly buff the Flying Machine and add +1 supply cost so that the human can still dominate air, but once their job is done they are stuck with useless units, this way they will be incentivised to not commit to so many units making air play maybe viable against them and if they do commit, well, now they have a bigger disadvantage on ground or are forced into higher upkeep.
Speaking of patch notes grubby, what was your favourite patch in the history of warcraft 3 and why? When do you think the game was in its best state/ most balanced! ( Anyone else that wants to chime in please do! )
![CAMPปลิ้น | EP.83[2/2] ประสบการณ์ขนหัวลุกจากตำนานวงการผี!](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/T_kFecQw7Ds/mqdefault.jpg)
Perhaps someone mentioned this before but Spellbreakers vs Heroes burn ONLY 4 mana per hit.
In your video you mentioned them burning 20 mana vs heroes which feels understandable because Spellbreakers are extremely annoying.
Frankly i would remove all forms of mana burn from the game and rebalance from that point, but reducing all forms of mana burn by about 33% would be a decent start.
MY BAD. Hard to get everything correct - there's no way it'd be 20 vs Heroes but head got fried a bit. - 4 vs Heroes is actually totally fine
> educing all forms of mana burn by about 33% would be a decent start.
33% you say? Deal. Demon Hunter had his original mana burn cut in half from its original 100/200/300.
65/135/200 mana burn for 65 mana please, with 300/500/700 range -_-...
removing mana burn sounds like an old thing league of legends players would say to dota players, alongside turn rate and denies lol
But why? they are a unique unit, with a special kind of "anti magic" theme to them, their mana burn is awesome, its not OP as well, it is only strong when you have a bunch of them focusing your hero, then, yes, annything should be OP when you are applying it "times 10" to a single unit.
@@thomaskunz3089 Burning mana in a game that is all about magic means turning everyone into basic footman. That is an awful anti-fun game design. No one wants their heroes to be footman. This is not about counter play. It is just not fun.
very nice idea and lots of work! always great to hear your thoughts on WC3!
Especially when so-called pro-players are lazy af and dont do the necessary feedback work, people like you and me have to step up, do whats right and take the blame after :D
Wow, no orc units tierlist yet. Grubby is stretching that one huh 😂
Its his favorite race.
The teirlist is still baking in the ovven for sure.
every Orc unit is S and imbalanced, there
Not for Tauren, Windriders and Catas :p @@xerasferalos9784
Scumbag grubby :D
@@xerasferalos9784 Tauren tier D Demolisher tier D are given of course.
0:17 he resisted to name it Refunded.
I can feel it.
Bruh it's almost all human nerfs.
Jaina's dad was right, never trust an Orc
hahaahahahh
I mean, quite a few people agree that the current top races are Happy and Human
Not true, aside from all the nerfs, he suggested extra 10hp for riflemen XD
Grubby always hated human (tier list of héroes)
Sadly, Blizzard will adopt most of his suggestions.
"We see one and then none.
Which is a petty, because theyre so pretty."
Poem to the Abominations - Grubby 2024
Pity*
Still think a temporary invulnerability period for channeling ults needs to be added. All that mana + skill point investment needs a better pay off.
Tranquility had one which they nerfed several times then finally removed altogether. Actually you could use potion of invulnerability with them until 2004 patch made them remove it (which is bs, none of the ults say they will cancel it)
IMO ultimates should just cost no (or very little) mana. They already have big CDs that limit their use, and it’s a massive feel-bad when you finally get to level 6 and can’t even use the stupid thing because you’ve been using your other abilities, or just got mana burned, or whatever.
@@CRuduxypegg huh, wasn't aware there was one at some point. Can't see a reason why a couple of seconds of invulnerability on an ult needs to be nerfed.
@@ek70 Can't make an ultimate stronger than a normal ability like storm bolt or hex :\ They think it is more balanced for a normal skill to foil ults..
Agreed 3 sec invul
23:40 I'd say change the range of control magic for ward-type units to something like 300-350, making positioning important and not such a free cast.
I’m convinced Grubby is trolling us now and is going to make a tier list of his tier lists before dropping the orc tier list we’re all waiting for
It’s coming! This was important to do first
@@GrubbyTalks Neutral creep tier list next, right?
Oooh item drop tier list
@@Izriel2k1yesssss item tier list!!!
@@GrubbyTalks cant wait for campaign tier list.
MGs and POTM are two NE units that has so much potential. Some ideas to make them better.
MG Changes:
TAUNT REWORK:
Option 1: Taunt makes MGs beat their chest for about a second now. What if that animation can be lengthened to about 4 to 5 seconds? MGs remain still, like a channeling ability, beat their chest continuously for a certain duration and it makes units continue to attack it even when they are issued another command, as long as MGs taunt animation lasts. It can be interrupted with storm bolt, ensnare and all that stuff. This doesn't change the ability that much, just makes it as a channeling ability. Taunt also affect towers. (doesn't taunt do that already? not sure)
Option 2: Alternatively, and this requires a bit more change to the taunt ability. Giving it an after affect ability, that causes the units affected by taunt to miss their attacks on other units except MG for a certain duration.
General changes:
Also, let MG attack air units and let air melee units attack them too. That means Batriders can detonate upon them and gargoyles can attack them too. Without the club, MGs remain the way they are, but with clubs, they can target air units as well, gain small splash damage on attacks.
POTM Changes:
SEARING ARROW CHANGES
Option 1: AOE affect: Since it has a fire affect, let it immolate the target for sometime, dealing small aoe damage affect like the lightning shield.
Option 2: Nuking potential: Increase the cooldown of searing arrows, make it immolate the target, dealing larger initial damage, and boosting magical attack damage and spell damage against the target. Manaburn, shadow strike, searing arrow, and entangling roots can give NE much needed nuking potential without relying on tavern heroes.
Option 3: Support role : Make the searing arrows immolate target, making range attacks do more damage to the target for a certain duration. Keep the current initial damage, Increase cooldown and mana cost. That makes POTM shine more when combined with ranged units, with both searing arrows and trueshot.
Owl changes:
Owl comes permanently with POTM. stays permanently unless shot down. You cannot scout with it, but stays above POTM. Yes it can be killed by any ranged unit or hero attack. and it is not in user control. It automatically respawns after a set time upon being killed. Initially, it increases sight radius of POTM. 1st level Owl increases the attack range of POTM (Also applies to searing arrow).Second level owl increases POTM attack range further, third level owl gains invisibility detection and further increases POTM attack range.
Trueshot Aura:
Passive ability that increases the attack speed and/or damage of ranged units the longer they focus fire on one unit. Has a damage and attack speed cap. That applies to POTM herself.
Those potm changes would be epic.
For Frost Armor on the Lich, I think the best way to handle levelling the skill up is probably mana cost, duration and cooldown. Essentially making it more economical for the lich to maintain frost armor on more of their units. Like... Imagine if the level 3 frost armor had a mana cost of 10 and no cooldown... that way the lich that's invested in frost armor can maintain it on their entire army and also fight against dispel to some extent... while also justifying the ability having an autocast.
It's a much more useful metric to adjust frost armor around than just boosting the armor it provides, anyway.
Note: Lich doesn't cast his spells fast enough for the cooldown buff on the Frost Armor to actually matter (unless we are speaking shift clicking)
Autocast and manual cast wouldn't be affected by a cooldown buff
Mountain Giant - act like a tree, blocking vision
Potm - Replace owl with Elunes Arrow from dota, Replace Searing arrow with anything (poison arrow same as orb of venom but stronger on lvl 3, leadership passive, healing - tyrande, some kind of mark - choose a favorite enemy etc.)
For Mountain Giants, I think the solution is *far easier* than inventing a new ability. Instead of giving them taunt, just copy-paste Thunder Clap from the Mountain King and tweak the numbers for a basic unit ability.
This lets the Giant protect his backline by slowing the enemy, giving them more room to kite. It synergizes with both bears and archers as both benefit from slowed enemies, both in taking less damage from attacks and allowing them to avoid or approach vulnerable targets.
It also has the diminishing returns of multiple mountain giants that you're looking for and makes them much harder to ignore individually.
Btw, Mountain giants taunt can still be tweaked a little and the concept of MGs as a tank can still be realized. Imagine this, Taunt makes enemy units target it like it does now, but also debuffs those units with 30% attack miss chance on every other units except MG itself for like 7 seconds. 4 seconds on heroes. Cooldown to about 20 seconds, that would make it useful. Stackable upto maximum 50% miss chance with multiple MGs.
I think you miss an easy option for the wards. Give it a lot more health but give it an "instant die on hit" ability or negative armor.
125hp and -999 armor. Its really that simple.
One idea with mountain giants is to let them attack air units as well in club mode. They are literally giants. Also let the air melee units like gargoyles auto acquire MGs as a target. That way MGs combined with hippogryphs can be both viable against undead? Also taunt can be good that way to allow hipogryphs one or more few hits because of the tiniest disruption.
Make MGs able to downroot and have archers be able to mount mg maybe 2 archer per mg but then the mg cant move but the archers can attack mounted
don't some golems have an air attack too?
where they throw stones at air units.
Probably a bit too good, so it would have to be weaker though
@@AnonYmous-spyonmepls Haha, that's creative. But it would be easy to just get out of the range and leave MG with archers alone, like they do now with MGs. If MGs can attack air, in melee with a club or at range otherwise and could attract melee air units with taunt, that would synergize well with hippos as well as hippo riders.
I like that idea, expand their utilization.
I also think taunt outta be a shorter range spell that lasts 2-3 seconds instead of an one-time effect. (This in turn would make them viable throughout all skill levels.)
This is like a Starcraft2 idea, where Vikings could attack the ground unit Colossus.
I was thinking of a spell for POTM and this is what I came up with:
Spell would replace searing arrow (which doesn't even really fit night elf lore because they don't generally set things on fire.)
Spell would be called something like Enchant or Moons blessing or something along those lines.
Spell would be used to enchant units to gain the positive effects of magic damage.
Spell would be cast on units with an area of effect circle, circle would increase in size per level. Initial length of enchant would be 15 secs increasing by 15 secs per level.
Positive effect of magic damage does not replace piercing damage so units under the effect would be more effective against heavy armor units while also retaining their bonuses to light armor etc. Imagine a group of archers being able to cut through heavy armor units like butter.
Effect on unit looks similar to a purple star fall glow hovering over their weapon.
Mana cost maybe the same as frost armor?
Buff Ult of Starfall from channelling ability to enhance attack type of ability.
Upon cast, within next 15 secs, PotM's basic attack is split into 3 with 66% on main arrow, 33% on the other 2. Item effects are 33% less effective on non-main arrow. Each basic attack of PotM is followed by a single star fall 1.5 secs after the previous attack hit the enemy unit. This would increase DPS by PotM but reduces its potential to be abused when PotM starts abusing attack speed items and buffs by her ult.
Searing arrows was supposed to be a "star". So i think dealing massive damage already is good for PotM and makes sense.
what abou reducing the ammount of EXP to get from level 5 to 6 just abit? So we see more cool ultimate strats
Maybe change to level 5 ptr… creeps to ult would be crazyyy
@@bigrodbrowny9184 it been this way in roc. It was nice change to stop leveling to ultimate as it forced players to be more active vs each other.
i think they should nerf ults globaly first. the way it is, an early lvl 6 is an early gg
@@bigrodbrowny9184 to level 5 is an interesting idea since it creates a choice between ult and level 3 main skill... However, I think it will introduce a swarm of balancing issues with heros with strong ult, like DH, panda, Alchemist, Dark Ranger. Just imagine the horror of metamorphasis in every night elves game... I feel like it might be to huge of a change at this stage of the game
Grubby, you failed to mention that NElf has ONLY 2 ways to detect invisible units (that are not external, like Dusts or Laboratories): Huntress' Sentinel, which has a single charge (and lasts for 5 min), is visible and can only be placed on trees (not just anywhere). And the other one is the Owl Scout, which locks you into a specific hero, requires an ability point investment AND you want to nerf with your proposed changes.
If anything, I feel like NElf needs a BUFF to their invisibility detection, not a further nerf... the Sentinel could be cooldown based, instead of being a single charge, for example. Or they could get something brand new, that doesn't require a specific hero.
That’s a good point.
This is a very solid suggestion, one I haven't ever considered. When you explain it that way, even the Huntress is a underutilized unit that doesn't see much play... And Sentinel is also immobile, very rigid, and inflexible.
Out of curiosity, what would you suggest should be a reasonable fix for it?
@@Shaeamful here are some options on how to fix it:
A) Refresh the huntress' Sentinel charge whenever her current one expires or is destroyed (when the tree is destroyed)
B) Give Sentinel a 3 minute cooldown (in line with the Mortar team and Arcane towers' reveal cooldown)
C) Allow Sentinel to be cast onto Ancient Protectors (or maybe Ancients in general), and make it permanent when used this way.
D) Rework fairy fire to be manual cast, with AoE and much higher mana cost.
E) Add a T3 upgrade, which makes wisp detonation reveal invisible units in the area around their targeted spot.
F) Give Druids of the Talon a passive reveal, when thy are in their bird form. Maybe after their master upgrade.
What about giving druid of the talon bird form true sight ? Since they are so rare this can potentially be a reason to even get them having one or two in the air like how human keep a couple flying machines with them sometimes to sweep/steal sentry wards
@@Khantia I actually really like the idea of option F, or potentially E! E conditionally, if Wisps just were given True Sight instead upon the upgrade (I feel like True Sight on detonate would just be a worse Dust)
Love your talks Grubby, hope this gets considered by Blizzard. Especially the wand of negation change, and in general seeing more T3+ units would be cool!
For POTM i would like to see Searing Arrows replaced with an actual "priestess" themed ability.
Perhaps some kind of "mark of elune" ability that would apply a Heal or Damage over-time effect to a friendly/enemy target, along with a movement speed buff/debuff.
Something to actually play into POTM's theme of being a PRIESTESS, instead of just an archer that tosses stars in 4v4.
I always liked that PotM is an agility hero in WCIII. I would rather Searing Arrows work with Orb of Venom.
Backpack update is OUTSTANDING idea. Opens up a whole new layer of play. With people trying to catch each other backpack carries etc. and picking up items leading to awesome situations. Imagine a situation human vs undead where undead steals staff of preservation and human steals orb of corruption. It will be possible with this although super rare
On the point of your PotM suggestion, I think a lot of Warcraft heroes could use a mini rework. Like is there ever a place for Thorns Aura realistically. The point of having 3 abilities is that it's genuinely meant to enable choice in how you play the hero. Much like how the Shadow Hunter is by far one of the best designed heroes because all his skills are super useful and every level you get on him (except for his terrible ultimate) is a skill point you are happy to get.
But it would just be outside the scope of what the Reforged team is committed to fixing. Which is almost nothing. Had Reforged been a success, I have no doubt we would finally have seen new hero abilities and maybe even new heroes, perhaps in a new "reforged" play mode. Alas.
Just to dive a little deeper into this topic for those interested in this kind of ramble:
I would have loved to see the game rebalanced/reworked around healthier game mechanics and more useful hero abilities. Like Staff of Preservation was basically Blizzard saying "alright Night Elf doesn't have any good healing abilities and they're not getting it with the Warden, so we're just gonna give them an item that covers that hole." But it's super unsatisfying as a mechanic. Night Elf combat has become "Hey my units are gonna disappear constantly in a flash of light if you haven't managed to kill any of my 2-3 heroes with a staff on it, including each other." You try to catch a unit and focus it down only for it to get instantly teleported to safety. That does not feel "Night Elfish" at all.
Why not instead rework the PotM to have a "Light of Elune" ability instead of Scout Owl that heals allies and damages enemies at night to play into the Night advantage theme. Instead of Searing Arrows, have "Sacred Arrows" that heal a nearby unit for the same amount of bonus damage. Then remove or severely nerf Staff.
I would put SO MUCH MORE weight on the night itself, making Moonstone and playing around time of day a huuuge part of their play style. It's really unique, and you already have an item that helps navigate that weakness to an extent. Where you want to siege the Elf during the day, and the Elf wants to siege you during the night. And you have to try and account for the day cycle when creeping. Put the "Night" into Night Elf so to speak.
I thought of some possible ideas for Mountain Giants the other day while pondering about this video. I noticed how tall Mountain Giants are while watching a replay and had some ideas. I am curious what your thoughts are:
1) What if Mountain Giants could also attack Air Units given how tall they are? Or perhaps only when they have a Tree Club? Either option means either Normal or Siege Attack damage so who knows how that may or may not be good/bad.
2) Or maybe instead, what if they had a move that pulls/knocks down air units so that other ground melee units can attack said "knocked down" unit for a duration or something. Maybe the knocked down unit even has some sort additional debuff during this duration to further make MG's have more utility without making Taunt more OP.
I’m still waiting for the Best Race unit tier
And footmen should receive sundering blades
I can't wait for us to make a tier list based on grubby's balance suggestions.
no meme, the most fun possible is added by introducing the naga.
a good way to balance the game is by adding races or adding new units tbh
Instead of fiddling with control magic numbers (other units are also affected) maybe wards could die in X hits but have hp for control magic or if that isn't possible due to coding issues. Maybe just extreme negative armor is enough for one shot or negative mg passive that "adds" dmg to hits
Actually not a bad suggestion! It'd be easily done with minimal extra coding needed for Blizzard, too. Just use Hardened Skin reduce all damage to 1, and copy & paste a portion of the Berserk ability code into a passive ability (the part that increases damage taken). I think the negative armor would look pretty shoddy (which the polish in aesthetic and user interface is definitely part of Warcraft III's charm). My only issue with the HP concept would be readability for newer players who aren't aware of the passive... But that's a rather small issue, especially if this would be back-ported to affect all Ward-type units consistently across the board.
Is there a reason for wards to not be magic inmune?
@@sebastiansalinas2336 You still want dispels to work against them. Dispels are a general counter to any persistent magical effect. It would be strange and hard to understand for new players if there was a specific subtype of summoned units that ignored magic.
For control magic units like wards: they could have negative baseline armor (-5 for eg) and more health. 1 peasant could still 1shot them because of the damage amplification of negative armor. It's a weird hack but it would work. You can actually do this to any extent, the armor dmg reduction formula scales the same way in every direction.
If we're replacing Taunt on Mountain Giant, I'd suggest that they be given a skill that passively diverts some amount or all of enemy-source projectiles that could target the Giant to the Mountain Giant like a magnet, whether arrows, or single target abilities with a projectile like Storm Bolt.
I think you could pretty safely greatly increase Glaive Thrower movement speed, but also reduce the Turn Rate of the glaive throwers at the same time. I think a lot of the siege units that have four wheels but no steering mechanisms could act this way.
I think when it comes to the Chimeras and Frost Wyrms (and previously Tauren long ago when walkers built from spirit lodge and tauren totem was t3) it would be interesting if the Boneyard and Chimera Roost were tech buildings that had some t3.5 unit upgrades, so building them has a purpose beyond just producing their one elite unit and didn't telegraph to your opponent that you were for sure making those units, but you still have the ability to throw one out there at any point so the opponent always has to be ready for it.
Sacrificial Pit that only produces those Shades... Bone yard that only produces Frost Wyrms...
Chimera Roost that only produces Chimera.
I think Chimera Roost needs to be tier 2, Chimera still tier 3, add new unit of a hatchling chimera... When reached tier 3, you can research or just after upgrading ToA to ToE a hatchling swap to a normal chimera. same with frost wyrms.
Bulwark could also be similar to spirit link. After activation x percent of all damage received by units in range gets transferred to the mountain gaint. and you can toggle it on & off, maybe with cooldown. a possible counter would then be a lot of aoe damage. like when the nightelf brings out mountain giants and you counter with aoe damage, it should be balanced so that the giants can't just be counter healed with rejuv.
"Scroll of Healing removed from ToR."
Thus the karma paw curls and:
"Scroll of Restoration added to ToR."
Orc tier list when
april 1st 2025
He's gonna milk our attention and antecipation.
Im ready for it tbh, will watch every single video until orc is released.
Soon(tm)
Wellmade video Manuel, i dont care about details, i just love the discussions still going on with this game that i grow
up with. Perfect for me today, having a cold while its raining outside
Maybe witch doctors should be able to cast all 3 totems when they pop out of spirit lodge, but effect of their totems should be reduced ? : -sentry ward last 3 minutes on novice -> on adept last 5 minutes -> on master 7 minutes
-stasis trap stun 2 sec (or ms and as slow instead of stun, something like thunder clap, however with uprgading doctors it would change back to stun?) on novice -> on adept a little bit longer stun/slow duration -> on master duration of stun increased a little bit
-healing wards duration and area of effect on novice would be smaller, so it can only heal up to a few units, and increase its mana cost to 200, so each witch doctor on novice can cast only 1 healing totem at the start -> increase the area of effect and increase witch doctors mana pool/increase its mana regen (slightly more than it is now) on adept -> on master training increase its area of effect and (or maybe keep it as it is and just change the %healing/sec to 1% on novice -> 1.5% on adept -> 2% on master with 150 mana cost at and range at all levels? )
so witch doctors would get some new possible ways to be used in mid game instead of just placing sentries all around the map
Also, maybe the wards should have permanent spell immunity /or extra upgrade that gives them spell immunity requiring t3 ( 75/125 ? ) so they can be only physically killed instead being taken away by spell breakers or some other dispells ? if something seems op or super bad I would like to know why
I like where this idea is going. Upgrade the power of all three spells, make them fairly weak at level 1, not a bad suggestion at all. Main problem is no other race has a caster like that, do they? Kind of makes them look like heroes for that. Although I would argue it would be nice if Priests got a similar treatment. Probably wouldn't be too hard to figure out other units that could benefit from this...even the Druid of the Talon is notoriously weak in Crow Form and could use some upgrades to make that form hit harder I suppose. As for Undead well, Necromancer and Banshee it's a coin flip as far as I'm concerned, I tend to use Necromancers more, so I'm more inclined to think it would be better for Banshees, it would help with the other viewer's idea of letting Banshees posssess workers at tier 2...perhaps that's the best choice for Undead if every race had one of those spell upgrade styles.
Really!? Beastmaster Hawk no mention?
Otherwise loved every minute of this 🙏
Ah and Pitlord Rain of Fire sees 0 play aswell and needs to be buffed to be atleast same cooldown and manacost as blizzard
Pitlords ultimate summon Doomguard should also have the same ms as the Dreadlords Infernal!
I think human non-power build expo should be buffed. Since late game the clock is often human's big enemy, it would be nice to have the option of building another townhall without fear of death of few remaining peasants and snowball into lumberstuckness.
It already feels off that lategame vs NE human generally falls off, as levels a lot of times aren’t achieved as fast as DH/Panda for example, and then they also often get their expos up rather easily. I know it’s a fine line, but it would be great to have even less timing dependent matchups and more diverse late stage matches.
Edit: maybe make having a Castle allow faster single worker build time of Townhalls
Why not buff abos regeneration speed to some noticeable value when wanting to increase their base stats - this would nicely fit into the units storytelling and also make them a little bit more unique.
I appreciate you doing so much for the WC3 community. Its incredible getting 250k+ views on your latest videos for a game which is like 21 years old.
Heal ward already has clear counteplay. It should be magic immune and untargetable by control magic.
My suggestions:
Magic Immune Units now take 90% reduced damage from Magic Damage Attacks rather than straight up immunity. Still remain spell immunity. Spell immune Units remain very good in all situations, and several greatly out preform all other units. This change still keeps them as an incredible hard counter, but not an invincible one. Also has the same benefit of giving High Templars an attack in sc2, lets them stop with the army rather than moving forward and dying against a group of all magic immune units.
Priestess of the Moon Owl Scout: Renamed Guardian Owl: No longer Immune to damage, but tanky, phases from play like faerie dragon for 10s when hit. Gives nearby night elves a 20/40/60% damage boost on their first attack out of shadowmeld can only apply once per 20s per unit. Level 2 applies buffs sentinels to give the same boost to nearby units. Level 3 allows a 15 second moonstone effect to apply to the map. While Guardian Owl is out, Priestess of the Moon can shadowmeld during daylight. Upon Expiring duration or using an ability, if sentinel is researched adds a sentinel owl to a nearby tree.
Priestess of the Moon: Immolation Arrow Removed. Replaced by Moonfire. 1 Second Cooldown Damage + dot ability. Can be set to auto-cast where she will prioritize hitting targets without the dot. Basically, to allow orb of venom use without penalty, as this would not affect auto attacks.
Hippogriffs movement speed increased to 410 from 400. This change makes the slightly faster than 400 flying machines. Hippogriff Riders increased to 365 from 350 to give them a small buff while still keeping them slower than gargoyles.
Frostwyrm Upgrade Icebolt: Allows Frostwyrms to hit Magic Immune Units for Half the Frostwyrm's Normal Damage. Enemies killed by Frostwyrms with this upgrade become frozen corpses blocking pathing, and preserving the corpse for triple the normal duration. Icebolt created corpses can be Possessed by Banshees (also DOOM, Transmute, and charm) and create full health 0 mana units.) 150/225 Cost Upgrade, 60s research time. (The magic damage is a serious suggestion, the rest is rule of cool.)
Abomination: Cannibalizing while at full health Will now overheal the abomination for 100 extra hit points that can last up to 1 minute.
Summon Skeleton: Skeletons summoned give half exp to heroes over level 5. This is to preserve their effectiveness later into the game where due to being low hp summons they are disproportionately weak compared to other higher tier units vs higher level heroes.
Crypt Lord: Passive Spiked Carrapacy: Also spawns locusts when using Impale or Upon Carrion Bettle Death with this passive.
Locusts Can now Overheal Cryptlord giving him temporarily bonus health.
New Item: It would be cool to have an item to force a kodo to regurgitate an devoured unit to either kill it, or as a count to your own units being devoured. Don't have a name for it besides Bag of Smell.
Control Groups are made Visible in the Interface. Like sc2.
Hotkey set up changed from "modify" a text file/select "grid" to a built in UI like SC2, with an improvement over the current SC2 in that you can choose in that For Grid Hotkeys you can decide where abilities are placed on the Grid.
A "Select all Summons" Universal Control Group similar to SC2s select all army, or select all Warpgates feature.
Unit Selection Cap increased from 12 to 100 as an option. This is one thing they said they would AT LEAST TRY when they advertised wc3 reforged and they never even tried. If SC2 and games inspired by SC2 are the main source for new players in the RTS genre, then it is very hard for those players to grow accustomed to the much harder unit control.
Here's an idea I got about human fast expansion rebalance;
Limit the number of peasants able to powerbuild a structure to 4. This takes the 5-peasant townhall build from 55sec to 68sec. That's perhaps a bit too harsh of a nerf, so let's reduce the base time by 10sec, 180s -> 170s, this reduces the 4-peasant powerbuild to 64 seconds.
That's a 9 second increase to the TH build time but frees 1 peasant to build a tower or whatever, or if an invading enemy opts to try killing the peasants human gets a "1 peasant buffer" to their maximum build speed.
You're still the best at being able to convey high-level commentary, bub. You really did cover everything. Appreciate you recognizing that there are players of all levels. And that balance changes as a whole should be geared towards the pro scene.
I know this game. And love playing it. But I simply cannot move fast enough to execute what I want during large fights. I know to micro away the unit being targeted but just can't do it quick enough. I guess all those decades playing side scrollers is showing itself. Or maybe I simply don't know the right mechanics. Like why cycle through all your ctrl groups all the time? Is it a movement thing? I still don't know. As you can imagine, it's quite frustrating. After a while, you come to accept it. Still believing one day there might be a breakthrough in your understanding, so the gameplay actually matches what you want to do.
Loved the MG discussion. And as probably the only fool who is an "expert" on the damn unit. Sure, let's give it a try. I'm still going to use them. Because as much as I'd love to get bears and go from rejuve to bear form and back like Kaho. You already know the first time you do that, you're going to lose half your army because it literally takes your fingers 10 seconds to find the buttons.
"Something need doing? Work, work."
I wish they gave Orcs back the Ogres like in WC2. They need more Tier 3 stuff. Maybe some kind of 'Horde Induction' upgrade at Great Hall that gives them ability to make Ogres at Barracks, and ability to upgrade them to Ogre Magi at Spirit Lodge?
A 5 hp heal ward indicates the spell is not intended to be used in combat but out of combat. Stasis traps are the in combat wards.
I feel like arcane tower hero feedback nerf is good, piercing damage could be slightly buffed, nothing too crazy, like +2 maybe.
You could argue that it’s too strong against unarmored units with a mana pool then, so you could just reduce feedback damage generally and buff piercing damage slightly. Seems a bit weak against dryads and quite strong against talons atm for example
Frost Armor Cooldown from 2s to 5s/3s/1s in addition to your changes could be a nice way to further incentivize it and be more balanced
Also what about Wind Riders to Tier 3 with some extra buffs to compensate?(but keep the other changes you suggested as well)
Mountain Giant in addition to your suggestions could have some kind of very small area slight movement speed slow for ground units(to represent them shaking the ground as they stomp around
and maybe give them a small aoe buff for only friendly ground units to have ranged attacks against them to have something like a 30% miss chance(to represent how big they are, and blocking line of sight to these units(you could also make them interfere with line of sight like terrain does, to slightly interfere with targeting, which could be really interesting) Maybe allow their club upgrade to enable attacking air units, but with a 50% miss chance
Saw some people saying Humans didn't get anything fun, so my suggestions are: a Tier 3 upgrade that makes Footmen stronger somehow(maybe like the Champion unit that's in the game)
Maybe give Knights 'Paladin Initiation', giving them Priest Heal, but much much less mana, and faster cast time, and slight magic resistance(10% maybe?) also a Tier 3 upgrade
Some kind of upgrade for Steam Tank, not sure what, but they're just bad. Maybe some slight buffs to stats, but perhaps some kind of resource harvesting bonus? Similar to Goblin Shredder or something like that. Just some thoughts
for frostarmor scaling argument, there are other abilities which are fine at level 1:
1. Hex. Strongest control available in the game, even stronger than stun as it prevents gaining experience, removes abilities (even auras and evasion), making unit even less protected while disabled. Longs much longer than typical stuns. Can be dispelled (which makes it perfectly fine having 1 point in it - already extremely strong);
2. Divine shield. One of the strongest abilities in the game, for 50 mana grant 15 second (big invul potion) of invulnerability (self dispell also), being able to drink manapots etc synergies well also. Leveling up prolongs duration, but also increase cooldown time, so it's fine to have 1 point in it.
3. Silence. Even it increase aoe and duration a bit, still the main effect is to break channeling spells or prevent enemy hero to use heal in the next 1-2 seconds or force invul potion/dispel.
Lich is already extremely hungry for exp and levels, as all 3 his abilities are vital for ud to survive. And all of them being nerfed. One of the abilities is dark ritual - is just utility to sustain nova usage, already have big cometition vs frostarmor, dalaying picking armor at level 6 in most scenarios. I say there is no need to scale frost armor to even lesser usage.
also, windwalk is another already extremely strong ability at level 1. It already grants undispellable invis, walk-through ability and even ms. If you donw go for extra duration/30 phys damage, like If plan to skill mirror image (orc vs orc/human/elf) - he can stay at level 1 ww perfectly fine and go for crits+mirror maxed next.
When I see Sundering Blades I want it to be a non-stacking (with itself) minus-armor debuff on hit to Medium/heavy/fortified armor units (Not buildings.) I think a little extra damage against one armor type is not only boring, but hard to justify researching in many games even if you're getting a lot of knights. For a lot of units that get specific upgrades like this one, it can be a really transformative one, like researching Web or bouncing hammers or something like that, you're getting a really strong upgrade for the unit that almost always does something.
39:40 "It is a fact that no Orc has ever expanded in a competitive game and made that work. It just doesn't work, it gets canceled too easily." If you define "worked" as in the strategy was beneficial to him winning, then "[HU] Fortitude vs Lyn [ORC] - WB Final - Warcraft 3 All-Star League Season 1 Monthly 1" played just about a month ago, on March 31, 2024 counts. Lyn fast expanded and though it did get canceled he drew attention from Fortitude (the best Human player in the world in Grubby's own recent words), in my book any strategy that improves your position works. Starcraft 1 has certain styles of bunker rushing Zerg as Terran, and even if your entire army and SCVs die, you might still end up with an advantage. And that is just 1 example I could find, I remember Orcs Tier1 expanding vs UD/HU on certain maps from almost 20 years ago.
11:55 Why do you keep getting basic mechanics wrong very often? "Tree of Life is 120 seconds" What's missing here is that "Entangle gold mine" takes 60 seconds, therefore making it the same 180 seconds as a Human's expansion, but NE obviously can't powerbuild, making it strictly worse.
Adding new skills to old heroes is indeed a nice thing, Very, Very cool, hope we see more of that, with beastmaster for example, with many other heroes, Bloodmage really needs his fire to be instant, that would 100% put him back in the game, and he would be STRONG for that, just, throw the fire and keep walking, like, as fast of a cast as a stormbolt or something like that.
Grubby I think you’re really undervaluing the cost to the NE player to take a PotM and the Owl skill. That’s an entire hero slot that they can never use for anything else, at least one level where they contribute nothing more than they did the level before, less xp for their other heroes nearby, etc... It’s a real cost. How many reveals could they buy from the goblin lab for even just the same gold cost? Like 5? And any one of those scans could win them the game on the spot, if they’re lucky.
I also thought it was interesting that you didn’t mention Farsight in that section, since it’s a very similar skill (and on a more popular hero no less). What’s the counter play against Farsight? It doesn’t even cost mana, so you can’t even mana burn the farseer forever to keep him from using it.
It's temporary
I believe with how expensive wind rides are a good buff will be to reduce their population cost from 4 to 3. On compensation they could reduce they dmg a little bit, this will be more in par with Humans dragonhawk riders (trading dmg vs utility) and put the evenomed spears as a tier 3 upgrade.
Grubthar Trollhard with another video.But, if I could subscribe twice, I would. This is S-tier content.
15:38 About the bloodmage flamestrike cancellation, I think Blizzard should set the channel time to whenever a clear visual indicator appears, like the time when the green circular mark on the ground appear. Right now the problem to me is that the (cancellable) channeling time is a random time that doesn't match any clear visual or audio indicator, which is unintuitive, and an un-fun skill check. I remember when I first played bloodmage, I would buffer movement/cancel the spell after I hear the audio and see the green mark on the ground. However, this timing will lead to a cancel.
okay here you go, you keep the ring of protection, but its a goblin shop item. it starts at +2. an upgrade. then you can take it to your race's blacksmith and level it up with different costs and effect based on race (im assuming even leveling would break balance)
I might be wrong, but I'd like to see some tier 3 buff for rifles, I feel like 1 base t3 strat will become viable again.
The buff could be "a double barrel" which allows you to switch to mode when you shoot from distance 400 but with splash damage mechanic wise like Flak Canons, numbers can be tweaked. And the point is you can switch back to 600 range and single target damage. This would give some flexibility to rifles
The Tauren suggests ive been saying haha. Without coding, the Tauren minimum speed could be floored at 220 which is the same speed as the common "Slow" speed units.
Other random changes I thought of is making burning oil not harm your own units (since frag shards doesn't harm either), following consistent logic.
Flame Strike: should have a drastically reduced cast time, but less damage/cost. Usability buff would be great here. It's effectively a worse nova.
Flying Machine: I think they don't need as much single target DPS if their main purpose is AOE.
Breakers should have movespeed reduced to 270 from 300. Too effective at approaching key units, and can out-run mostly all the normal damage units that supposedly counter them.
For Witch Doctor I think changing Stasis trap from 7 to 4 sec delay, and lower to 2(1) second stun could REALLY make them more usable without the noob-stomping properties it currently has.
- The significance of the 4 second delay is that you can pre-cast them when an enemy TPs in, and they can get hit by them reliably without too oppressive of a stun.
- Sentry Wards can have way less duration as it is technically op
- Healing Wards could have less cost, less duration proportionately. The 30 sec duration is usually wasted and is bad for topping off HP, but great for wounded units.
I think Frost armor doesn't need that change because Frost Nova already provides the slow buff in an aoe, slows ranged units, and requires the conscious decision to focus the unit with the buff, with melee. It is arguably worse than Devotion aura in every way, but I think that is okay because Frost Nova is so strong. I think 3/6/9 or 2/5/8 should be the change imo.
Death and Decay shouldn't hurt your own units. I think friendly fire is a bit outdated but neccesary for spells like Blizzard, being such a low cost spell. Volcano doesn't have friendly fire anymore, therefore I think DnD shouldn't either.
Alt to replacing Mountain giant Taunt (as you said it's effective at low levels of play and has a purpose there) but maybe add an effect to Taunt that gives affected enemy units something like -35% miss chance on attacking any unit other than MG units for 3-5 seconds. This puts the decision on switching targets on the opponent and is a bit more clear in intent and in line with the spirit of what the design concept was rather than a standard ally buff buffing.
I think it would be cool to add value to tier 3.5 buildings by adding some upgrades.
For example, could be cool if Boneyard had some upgrades for skeletons. Maybe +health, maybe +magic res (so wisps no longer one shot), +range for skeltal mage. Or an upgrade for wyrms to be able to “shed” bones in flight or on use ability, generating corpses like meat wagons.
Zug Zug! Balance patches.
Ended up playing dota yesterday! Will try for all day WC3 today!
I can get behind making PotM a more interesting hero. The attack bonuses of leap feel a bit weak, maybe make the 2 charges of a single leap cast stack with eachother.
How do you feel about Trueshot Aura? I always hated how it's the only heroic aura in the game that can be replicated by units. Upgraded Kodo gives 20% attack bonus to ALL units, not just ranged. Same with Roar that gives 25% attack bonus to all units, yes at a mana cost but it makes Trueshot Aura feel like such an underpowered ability.
It's hard to rework it without having it overlap with another aura in the game or turning it crazy strong in team games.
I had the idea of giving it an additional effect of giving ranged attacks a X%/2X%/3X% chance to ignore their target's armor reduction for the same amount.
Death and Decay is BAD, have it heal, instead of damage, non-structure friendlies in its AoE for 2% HP per second.
Dear Grubby! Suggestion for Priestess of the Moon:
Q - Elune's Judgement: Target unit is marked and provides vision for 15/25/40 sec (5/8/12 heroes) and takes % increased damage (10%/20%/30%)
W- Elune's Shroud - Remove debuffs and conceal the Priestess for 3/4/5 sec, gain 15/25/35 move speed. Attacking makes her visible (ultimate or casts do not)
E- Same
Ult - Same
Numbers are guesstimates.
The Owl was and is lame. Elune's judgement provides single target dps that searing arrows gave but works in theme of her needing an army, helps creep slightly and retains the vision aspect from owl. Provides counterplay to Blademaster windwalk harass.
Elune's Shroud provides a defensive tool for the hero, in line with her thematic. Most importantly if invested into allows for setup and use of ult, which is the coolest part of the hero that is never seen in competitive play. Opponents must invest into detection to have counterplay.
I never understood why it's lame. It's literally giving you permanent map hack over a decent area and it's cheap to cast.
@@zdravkodimitrov Hacking is not cool. NE already has various scouting options, plus the proposed change keeps an aspect of scouting/vision.
Most importantly I want a combat ability on my Priestess.
patch changes tier list incoming pogchamp
Honestly even if i don't play warcraft III really anymore i fully support your work and i think you work hard on this, so i really hope it will impact the future meta of warcraft III !
This is my favorite tier list to date
Instead of Bulwark, perhaps a Cover-style ability would be more suitable. The Mountaint Giant's monstrous size could allow it to shield nearby allies from enemy attacks at the cost of absorbing the damage itself. There'd be tons of possibilities for the exact mechanics of this ability, but it wouldn't have the problem of being 100% counterable with decent APM that its current active ability suffers from.
I've not played this game for 14+ years but I think I can contribute to the discussion. The MG change could be different, lets say 10s duration aura, not 3s, but it does bring down the MG own defences, like -4 armor and -25% magic resistence or a self slow, or something that the other player needs to make a decision: Or a focus the MG down or I kill it's allies.
And about the Lich frost armor, we may also add the change of it being 50/45/40 mana cost per skill level.
I'll give my rambling thoughts on some of these changes (the particularly exciting ones) but first, I thought it would be good for clarity to mention that I have been playing WC3 since 2004 -- however -- most of my experience with the game is through the Editor, and Custom Games... *NOT* melee, even if I find it very interesting.
The Wand of Negation change to require Temple of the Damned was actually what made me decide to actually comment... So I'm actually going to respond to that, first. I actually *love* this idea. Furthermore, I find it so exciting that I'd actually love to see the concept expanded to other races for them to have unique items which are unlocked by Arcane Sanctum/Spirit Lodge/Ancient of Lore. But even if that doesn't happen, I still find this extremely exciting. Or -- perhaps if we wanted to take the idea asymmetrically; perhaps instead of a 'caster-building' we put the item requirement as the least used T2 building each race.
I was kinda mixed on the idea of the Backpack upgrade on a structure which didn't have any training/upgrading capabilities... However, when I think more on it -- I think this is actually a healthy change. It could take the place of 0,0 on the command card and shift the items over. Perhaps if the idea of each race having a 'caster building' item is taken into consideration, they could take the place of 3,1 -- which isn't currently occupied to my knowledge?
I'm not really in favor of increasing the power-build time bonus, I think that it's a unique mechanic which I'd hate to see never be utilized. If it was nerfed too significantly without the costs for it being scaled in proportion, I feel like we'd just never see it used. However, I think your proposition for instead increasing the Town Hall build-time would be much preferable. Perhaps this is an overestimation, but I'd say bump it an extra 20 seconds for an even 200; Humans would be strongly incentivized to power-build and it would help balance out the expansions between the races -- maybe?
I was a fan of the Sorceress Polymorph buff in the PTR; I think 2 or 2.5 seconds on Heroes would be preferable over 1.5. Perhaps I am overstepping my boundaries when I say this, but I kind of feel like Blizzard immediately nerfing the 3 second debuff duration to 1.5 was an impulsive decision which was spurred on by people complaining too quick, and being aversed to change. However, I do think Polymorph being usable on Heroes is, within itself, a good change.
I'm definitely in favor of the proposed Masonry change you've suggested, but have no further comments on it.
Why not just give Healing Wards (along with all other wards) Spell Immunity? IIRC, don't most spells not work on them anyway, since they're classified as targeted as a ward?
Mountain Giants definitely need... Something. The concept of Taunt, like you said, doesn't really work unless you're really bad (which, I feel is discouraging design for newer players -- since the spell specifically targets them and doesn't work on anybody with even a modicum of skill). I'd say either give Taunt a short forced-attack period (to keep the design as-is, allowing them to maintain their niche as it was intended), or, provide them with the ability you'd suggested. Although I'm definitely not as qualified to comment on balance as you are (which is something I've really tried to stress during this whole post), I do feel like +2 Armor and +15% MR is rather small for something meant for an active on-cast ability? Perhaps I'm wrong. If I were designing the ability I'd shoot for +5 Armor, 25% MR -- does NOT affect Mountain Giants (thus, they provide great survivability to everybody, becoming bigger threats and encourage being focused as targets).
Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I actually really like the idea of Priestess of the PotM keeping her Searing Arrows ability. I was pretty excited to see it get buffed. I can understand what you mean about the Orb of Venom not working with it, though. I myself, however, would rather see her Searing Arrows to be buffed where they're still a considerable option than it totally be removed. If anything, I'd rather see Owl Scout be removed. I don't think it synergizes with her other abilities and like you suggested, there's no counter-play for it. I also do not think your proposed fix would fix this, but rather, push it into the other direction (too much counter-play). I just think that this ability is inherently flawed conceptually, and there's little that can be done to salvage it -- I've felt that pretty consistently over the course of my experience with the game.
I love the idea of slow resistance, however, that would require hard-coding an ability from Blizzard which I suspect won't happen. I think if they were willing though, that would be a much beloved change (as I'm sure several mappers, myself included, would love to see more abilities to play around with... Especially slow resistance which would be particularly difficult to script). Therefore, I think Resistant Skin would be something that could be done with relative ease (perhaps only needing to make a new Icon from Blizzard's end). Still, I like all of your Tauren suggestions across the board. I'm really fond of Tauren as a unit, and even as a race in Warcraft lore... Sucks they're so underwhelming.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think you're attempting to go against your Orc bias too much with the Sentry Ward nerf. I'd say nerf them to 8 minutes, observe and see how the community responds -- if they're viewed as too strong after that, continue towards 7 minutes until it feels appropriate. A 30% duration nerf seems... Pretty drastic.
I agree with the abomination change. It's another unit which, again, I find unfortunate doesn't see as much play as it should. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I feel like a damage buff alone wouldn't change that, though. But, perhaps I'm incorrect in that opinion.
Huge love for the suggested Master Training changes!! Caster units are extremely fun to watch and play with, and I'd love to see the lesser-utilized casters see more play.
I'm in favor of literally all of your suggestions for Frost Wyrms, I'd love to see them utilized more. They're an exceptionally cool unique. I know that it would require some hard-coding on blizzard's end; but it might also be cool to see them have an ability which causes their attacks to either temporarily disable or reduce life regeneration/healing (similar to Ancient Apparition's ult), giving them a new niche. Additionally, the custom mappers would really appreciate having the extra ability to play around with without needing to code it manually.
Alright, that's just about enough rambling from me now, lol. Thank you for investing so much time into attempting to improve one of my favorite games, I absolutely love your content. Everything else that I didn't comment on was either positive or I just didn't have enough thoughts or opinions on to give more informed information about -- I'd say almost every change that you suggested though I responded to very positively.
I was also going to comment on Staff of Negation idea, so chose your post to continue on.
I don't see the point, it doesn't fit the lore for me. It might work, but the Scourge faction are spell binders. It is like a currency for Scourge to be used and spent. Staff of Negation cancels this notion. Scourge bind spells, not dispell it. It is something other factions would do whereas Scourge would channel it for some other magic. It also breaks the high risk high reward Scourge build tree. I think as it stands, it is the only faction working in The Frozen Throne - no one knows how it works, but it is pretty balanced. The Obsidian Destroyers are the main stay of Tier 3 Scourge roster which counter magic hard. The Staff of Negstion would be too different.
Change proposition for the Frost Wyrm so it can be useful to have just one (as for the Abomination and your proposition for the Mountain Giant): an Anti-Aura that reduces movement speed of enemy units by 5-10%, no reduction in attack speed, doesn't stack with frost movement speed reduction from other Undead units
1:07:20 Revert them back to -1 armor, but also decrease their cost so people sell them less often to get other things, force them to experience their power
I would love to see some more viability of the NE warrior ladies. They have a whole unique upgrade path in the hunter's hall that doesnt go anywhere late game since they fall off so hard. Other races can often have their T1 units scale into end game, but night elves almost always need to transition to the druid path.
Maybe a T3 upgrade for huntresses to make them an interesting choice in the later game.
If you reduce the splash damage of flying machines give them either a small hp boost or 1+ singke target damage.
You can win the airfight but wont do much damage to ground. Win the airfight with windriders and you damage heroes and ground units. You cant change balance around 4 vs 4.
Really interesting thank you Grubby
I would like to see a balance note challenge where people can only make one (maybe two) changes to each race. Promote high impact, easily digestible discourse about the best way to approach individual balance issues. Sometimes it's hard to look past all the potm changes to really imagine how the meta would change.
4:19 - If you wish to bust spellbreaker mirror, then a T2 upgrade (wow human, upgrades, wow) that gives footmen a much better matchup against spellbreakers would likely achieve this.
It doesn't have to be a massive steamroll kind of upgrade (so likely just reduced medium damage by a flat amount, or something like that), but the important part is that e.g. with +1 barracks +1 sanctum at t2, you'd be able to hold out until T3 and BTFO the breakers with knights.
Footies are cheap and expendable, so if they can hold out long enough for a replacement to come out, they'll do their job even better.
you could make spell brakers have piercing attack instead of normal, so defend works on them. i don't know how it would effect brakers against other things, but I don't think it would be a huge difference
The MG bulwark + 20 hp on hyppos would make gargs vs hyppos battles much more in elf favor than it currently is. The suggestion also needs to define how big is cooldown for the new ability, cause there's a huge possible range to play with.
"Scout owl is uncounterable" Like farsight? Should farsight have an APM tax counter that completely invalidates an already underused ability?
far sight only reveals a small area for a short period of time, and cannot track an entire army for a long time. It also comptetes with 2 very good and crucial abilities, all owl competes with is searing which is useless after orb anyway.
Give abominations a bleed ability on the opponent or a hook ability of stitches, give tauren's pulverize ability the chance to slow movement speed of nearby enemies but limit its damage to 20 (like a thunder clap), give Grunts bloodrage ability which would make them attack 25% faster but they take 15 damage per second for 5-10 seconds, give archer the scatter shot ability which would attack 3 units at the same time for 2 shots but a long cooldown, those are some abilites I find cool.
I'd like to see more drastic changes:
How about making all wards magic immune to boost witch doctor?
Makes wards better useable against spell breakers, destroyers, dryads etc but you still counter them by attacking them. Makes attacking them instead of some autocast thing actually counter them and fits in line with serpent ward.
How about removing chimaera roost and chimaera come from ancient of wind? Allows for more natural follow-ups to chimaera.
How about replacing Potm Scout with the owl ability from Tyrande in Hots. Still scouts but it's a damage ability as well (higher levels let's it pierce one extra target and increases damage).
How about changing far seer Far sight to be able to target friendly unit. Gives increased mana regeneration and cooldown reduction for X seconds. Would really be useful if you manage to get a shadow hunter or TC lvl 5 and 'boost' it with your far seer perhaps making shadow hunter first and far seer second better.
Quick notes on the undead suggestions:
Lich's Frost Armor only slows melee attackers, so making the level 1 version only provide +1 armor seems pointless against any ranged unit. If you really want to change anything I would suggest tweaking cost and cooldowns so further investment gets the ability cheap and fast, whilst the level 1 version is about as strong but only applied to a couple of units.
Speaking of Lich... will anyone protest if Dark Ritual became mana cost free to use? You're meant to recover mana, so you spend some mana to recover some mana. It is already not a priority spell and has a rather hefty cooldown.
Abominations. What about making their consume work like NE's Eat Tree? You sling the corpse into the stomach maw and it chews happily along whilst the abomination goes about its day, slaughtering Footmen/Peasants. It would separate it from the Ghoul's version and would make Abominations easier to keep alive during combat, especially if you have some meat wagons with you.
Hey Grubby! I love your video.
What do you think about the following idea?
...
Searing Arrows get some moderate splash damage to make it more appealing as a first/second hero choice?
Obsidian statues get some casting time before they Morph into Destroyers? (3-5 sec)
Sundering blades work on 1 more (additional) type of armor like heavy or light?
Spirit walkers get moved from Spirit Lodge to Tauren Totems (to avoid total predictability concerning building Taurens) and the building can be built at T2 (but not necessarily the taurens themselves, only walkers)... I mean, technically they are also cows, like Taurens :) :)
Thx in advance if you choose to answer!
Peace!
So the timing is delicate for Possession; the only reason it would cool to have possession at tier two is you can steal a worker and play two races and at tier 3 its not really viable because the other player has enough resources to keep you from stealing workers, if a carve out was made to possession that allows you to steal a worker but no other units at tier 2 might keep it balanced. The main reason being fun factor, who wouldn't want to try playing two races and it opens up a huge window for different strategies. The only reason i keep bringing it up and I'm an undead main so yeah. :)
Also thank you for adding sections for the different races, I watched up to night elf, then noticed the sections and skipped to undead.
Hey legend, I like lots of your changes, although I dislike the small number tweaks and nerfs that reduce the skill cap, so I have a few of my own:
- I would not change any of the numbers of Ghoul Frenzy, but I would add a passive 10% damage taken increase to the upgrade. People would still be able to micro them due to no movement speed reduction, Ghouls would still have the same potential damage output due to no attack speed reduction, but you would potentially reduce their damage output by giving the opponent chance to counterplay. Somewhat inspired by Troll Berserker activatable ability.
- I would leave Taurens a T3, leave their numbers as is, but I would remove the autoattack and make Pulverize their autoattack. Scale the damage of the Pulverize with Melee Weapon upgrades. Change the Pulverize upgrade to provide 100 more AoE and 20% 2 second slow on impact. This would play into the role of tanky AoE damage dealers, that even if crowd controlled can make the impact in their role. Would this make them too strong vs lower tier ground units, YES it would and it should. 1 Tauren should make the difference when fighting 8-10 ghouls and skeletons, or archers or whatever. Would this make Taurens too strong in large numbers, well arguably they are too strong in large numbers currently as well, it is just that it is hard to get there, while opponent still continues to make the unit composition that is bad vs large amounts of Taurens.
- I would make Grunt Berserker Strength upgrade apply on Wind Riders as well. Slightly more love towards Wyverns, in a spirit of Animal War training.
I just want to bring up a point that HU also has only 1 source of dispell.
So, it's not that 1 source of dispell is necessarily an issue for the UD. It is that it comes to late into the game.
Maybe make a research for statues to be able to dispell? It would cement them as an even more staple unit, but I think there would still be place for the Destroyer as it is a fighting, flying, magic immune unit and Statue is just a supporting unit.
Spellsteal is kind of like dispell, as is Control Magic
@@GrubbyTalks True, didn't think about it.
31:00 As for Mountain Giants, maybe a damage share ability? For X Seconds the damage the friendly unit receives is split between the MG and the unit. Adjust the ratio for balance.
20:40 I just had a little thought regarding control magic vs witch doctors: maybe you could nerf it a little by letting you leech of the benefit from the effect of a healing ward for example, making it heal friend and foe alike, so that the Orc player may decide of he wants to destroy it himself when the enemy benefits more from it than he is.
No idea how that would play out in pvp matches, but it sounds neat in my head at least.
After I saw how low you ranked NE heroes, it surprised me how little balance you proposed for them (me crying because NE are the weakest 😢).
For the PotM, as another comments suggested, replacing Searing arrow with a healing arrow or something similar to DN's Coil seems interesting and more Priestessly.
For the MG, I think a good replacement for Taunt could be an Outrage, like Pit Lord's Howl of Terror. It helps protecting your units and makes sense because if you see a giant roaring, you get intimidated. Also attacking flying units with the club sounds hilarious.
For KotG, maybe replacing Thorns Aura with an AoE attack can reduce the need of relying on Tavern heroes.
Finally, letting Chimeras attack flying units or at least making them more tanky makes sense.
I feel like instead of going the Mirana route , they could fuse searing arrow and aura a single ability with a passive and active aspect to it , turn down the damage back to 10 20 30 and give potm a new ability , make her tiger roar buffing nearby units with movement speed and attack speed to hasten retreat and help archers move around the map and kite a little bit better since they get stuck on everything including themselves for some reason unless you are applying micro on them constantly, something like 20 25 and 30% movement speed 10 15 20% attack speed for 5 7 10 seconds? numbers can be played with but yeah, Potm needs a rework
Theoretical question:
How would impact the game's balance if you had a T3 "Backpacks lvl2" research that was really expensive (say 300g / 200l) that allowed units to use the items they carry, but all effects from said items are cut in half in terms of effects and duration?
Which race would benefit most from this, given their shops?
Which units would benefit most from this?
Also, a bit of a challenge:
Also, I would like to see you in a match in which both players are limited in the following way:
You start the match with 100 Actions, you get 10 Actions every 10 seconds. You lose one every time you order a unit or group of units to Move, Attack or Cast a spell. Selecting units/buildings, training, rally point and research do not count as Actions.
If you run out of Actions, your units will not obey new commands, but will continue with whatever they were ordered. (Say you order a pack of ghouls to move from A to B, and run out of actions, but you see an enemy scout on the way and order to attack, the ghouls will simply ignore the order and continue their move command)
Essentially it forces the player to play on low APM for most of the match and think carefully what to do at any given time. Do I run as smoothly as possible while running on fumes, or do I play slowly and pool my actions for decisive engagements?
Archmage changes: If the Archmage uses too many Mass Teleport's to their home base, Blizzard will change to waves of firing, for which anyone friendly unit caught within will be transmuted, but the gold gained will be pilfered by goblin sappers.
I have a suggestion for channeled ultimates. Have them continue for 1-3 seconds after being CC'd, but stopped instantly if the hero is ordered to move. This makes stopping them a priority, but you still gain some measure of benefit from using them. I think especially for Tornado, Stampede, and Volcano this could make them a much higher priority for picking.
So it's like the 1-3s invul that KotG used to have. It didn't feel great to play against
No, but it also feels terrible for a stampede to end with one lizard on the field, or a volcano with one rock. Maybe a counter could be that the cooldown is reduced and mana partially refunded if it's canceled by your opponent within the first few seconds? It's a huge opportunity cost to take the skills, let alone the mana cost. The risk is all on the using player.
I disagree with the suggested Ring of Protection nerf. They finally became valuable - 2 or 3 rings on your hero actually do something now. Plus they actually do help creeping - but they make it cheaper, not faster. The Ring of Protection finally became worth of investing an inventory slot into and nerfing it back to "just sell it right away" thing doesn't make sense to me.
A charge ability for Tauren might be cool as well to close the gap and to engage enemy units.
I would actually slightly buff the Flying Machine and add +1 supply cost so that the human can still dominate air, but once their job is done they are stuck with useless units, this way they will be incentivised to not commit to so many units making air play maybe viable against them and if they do commit, well, now they have a bigger disadvantage on ground or are forced into higher upkeep.
We need a tier list for all towers and attacking buildings in general, including ancients, burrows, undead main, etc.
The human hate its real
Speaking of patch notes grubby, what was your favourite patch in the history of warcraft 3 and why? When do you think the game was in its best state/ most balanced! ( Anyone else that wants to chime in please do! )
**Human existing**
Grubby: NOT ON MY WATCH 😡