1.30.4 Patch Notes

General Discussion
170

I’am still calling for a new or reworked “Animated Death” for the Death Knight.
We have already told alot of the problems for this ultimate, a quick reminder for this one:

Too expensive in terms of mana (less coils, less death pacts), and very situational, I mean, you need the correct corpses, the correct timings, enough mana and even then, the raised corpses are completly random, I feel. I will probably revive 3 peasant and 2 footmen when there are dryads and taurens with pulverise around. And even if it does revive the correct corpses, you probably have won already or the enemy just runs aways, almost completly negating the ultimate and taking three unused coils with him.

Oh wait, you can build a meatwagon real quick, research an upgrade, wait for 6 corpse of crypt fiends, drive the meatwagon to the battlefield, and then use it ! Boom. Even tho, you could probably push or lure the enemy away and “maybe” kill the expansion for it, this move is very unlikely or unrealistic to happen. : /

I don’t know what the correct solution would be. Maybe reviving 6 zombies with chaos damage that doesnt need corpses and cost about 150 or less mana, (which would be the same problem in green) or some kind of passive as ultimate (coils and deathpact have too much value…), something that gives synergie to the other spells and/or stat bonuses for example, or something completly different, different name, different mechanic and so on.

A good ultimate would also motivate players to play single DK with gargs and ghouls again, or something similar with late second hero, for example.

Well, lets say, I don’t like it that other races have ultimate and level 6 literally as winning condition while the DK has almost nothing when he reaches level 6.

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171

Please fix the desync issue. I would like to play my custom maps with my family again, could do before, like 2 patches ago. Thank you very much, and thank you for your work.

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172

Great job, keep keeping us informed and don’t say a word or do fixes.

173

Yeah I find this a bit odd too. The core of the evolution of classic WC3 into reforged seemed to be interaction with the community who has shown high levels of dedications throughout the years. Yet, I don’t think we heard anything from blizzard in 2019 yet? Kinda odd the centerpiece for the expansion gets neglected.

Oh well, Activision Blizzard lost almost half stock value in 6 months. Perhaps they are just awaiting an approval from a CFO they can’t catch as those are rotating in and out at high speed. Giggle.

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174

@Pete stillwell

Are you going to make a balance rework on UD so that they are possible to win tournaments with? You must be aware that Warcraft 3 is a 3 race game right now. If you want to be aware mabye you should listen to pro undead players. If you do not have these intentions mabye save some time and remove undead from the game for reforged.

No undead player will get it anyway. Pay like 100$ + to be at a severe disadvantage for another decade? No thanks.

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175

I’d not argue UD is too weak. But their play style is very linear. Making it an inflexible race. Based on pre 1.30 statistics undead was doing actually slightly better than the other races. The empiric fact that few undeads win tournaments can be the result from the fact undead is the least popular race. Although this can be a result from them not winning much tournaments I doubt many players pick their race early on and change main throughout their WC3 experiences. At least not to a significant degree. Now the difference in popularity is not much; but if you take the top 1% of all players a small difference in normal distribution can have far going results 3 standard deviations up the mean.

Now this data is not available for 1.30 series. One can holy hypnotize about this. for undead primary not much changed. You can argue orb and destroyers are a tad nerved. Both dominant against HU versus which they still appear to do perfectly fine. They now however do have more utilization from other heroes as dread- and cryptlord.

Perhaps what is more noticeable are changes to the other races. There are too many details to theorize about this here; so rather lets take the top. One thing keeps popping out, which is night elf. There is no argument they where severely buffed early 1.30 which included buff to keeper, archers, huntresses, glaives, moonwells and mountain giants. Later hunts were partially nerfed back. Entangle was adjusted and multiple bugs with MGs are fixed. However comparing 1.29 to current 1.30.4 overall they are still significantly buffed.

As empiric result there is noise throughout the community. That noise? Night elf is BS. Note that these are not my words: those are from Grubby (Twitch). This is little change from his statements on elf earlier (warcraft3.info/articles/255/community-spotlight-an-interview-with-grubby) where he states he does not want to disclose much about balances but seemed to feel the need to emphasizes this rigor from elf. Now since we lack statistics we can’t rule out bias. But Grubby does play all races and is well tempered on his stream. However the complaint is echo’ed. Happy stated that Keeper is overpowered (warcraft3.info/articles/259/community-spotlight-an-interview-with-happy).

Although most public streams temper the noise in subtext you can still hear the hostility versus elf. On b2w someone in chat mentioned he got a GF. Neo congratulated him and said “I hope she is a keeper. The good kind of keeper that is, not like this one [addressing Kotg in the current game at the time]”. These subtle remarks can be found in large quantities throughout the pro scene. Below that skill level this is harder to assess since anecdotes are less public.

Anyhow, let me conclude that both from a theoretic perspective we can deductively argue elf should be (too) strong. We have pre 1.30 statistics and we can argue changes to incrementally adjust balances (in theory). That theory is supported by the most vivid anecdotes. Although no large data size is available nobody can really establish anything for sure. An opposing side will attack either in theoretic frame work or the sample group c.q. size.

TLDR: as I’ve posted before. Blizzard. Do something about elf and rather today than tomorrow. It has been rigged long enough.

Edit to the links since forum won’t let me post em otherwise.

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176

I just wanna drop my idea, that I had in mind for months now, its about reworking the necromancers almost completly to a, so called, core unit.
Necromancers would become similiar in there stats to spirit walkers; Bigger HP/Bulk, bigger manapool (that comes with the trainings), and very slow but high damage autoattacks, but also way higher cost. (Around 200/40 or less.)
Well, I guess, there ingame model should also become slightly bigger and there spells must be slightly changed, I assume.
This is probably worth a thread…

I was also thinking about the wand of negation as T2 item for the undead shop but there are tons of good argument for it, aswell as tons of downsides for it… probably worth another thread. : /

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177

Oh yeah? Please reference me that data you babbeling liar. I both in tournament winnings and on every single Ladder matchup you Will se undead have worse win % than other races during a decade.

Second. IF UD is slightly less popular. It Will have a negliable effect on the amount of pro players. So your whole argument is irellevant. It is most likely UD is less popular because they are the worst race. What other reason would it be? that you think people is less emotionally connected to UD or some other unexplainable magic reason? You fail to ask yourself the question WHY ud is less popular and babble about irellevant small statistical issues. Why would a race be less popular in a competitive game? The answer is simple: because people realize UD has a disadvantage both in strategic options and in general. Hence, some experienced players stop playing ud and the game or switch race. That’s why ud is slightly less popular and that is exactly why pro undeads don’t win anything.

Happy has stated that undead is the worst race and needs a rework. I even think it is in the link you provided. Second, not a single ud pro wins anything. It is very clear.

And yes of course NE is OP now. It is common knowledge. Based on your talk it’s obvious you play human or orc and has no knowledge what so ever about undeads possibilities.

Usually when someone has to produce a novel to motivate something, they are wrong and you are wrong.

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178

The article can be found here warcraft3.info/articles/184/battlenet-statistics-part-3-which-is-the-best-race

Prior to 1.30 series data mining was thing. But the method for doing so was disrupted when the architectual structure of the game was adjusted in preperations of reforged. It shows undead wins on average 53% (median 51%). Mildly higher than the other races.

UD is not less popular because of tour results (as shown by stats above). People tend to pick orc or hu most likely because these originate from the lore in WC2. And if UD is less popular it means far fewer will reach the top. Assume the mean for UD is 22 (22% of the people play this race). Then for non UD races this is 78/3 = 26. Assume that people are considered pro 3 standard devations up the mean. The probability of an ud pro is 0.0038%. The chance of a non ud pro is 0.0912%. I.e. any other race will be 24 more times likely to be in the pro scene. I’m no math miracle but I’m sure someone here can confirm or deny at least the concept itself.

I don’t trust happy on saying UD is the weakest. Everyone always wants their own race buffed and/or other races nerfed. My bet is you are a UD player ; - ). Yet it is not addressed that UD walks over HU. These posts tend to be filled with personal bias and cognitive dissonance.

I play random btw. I don’t see why ‘novel’ stories tend to be wrong. All I did was take informatoin we know, hypothize effects from there and see if it could be verified. Call it a novel all you want; it is also the set up for scientific scrutiny. I don’t care where we end up. I just want to leave a premise and arrive at a concluse that follows the process. You seem to want to have the concluse UD is weak and find the evidence that supports that. I feel my narrative holds more ground based on empirics. GL falsifying this, but your post clearly shows hostile intent so I don’t expect a tempered, open minded reaction tbh.

179

Undead has the worst professional (major) tournament win ratio of all races.
Professional undead players like FoV, Susiria and Sweet for example, retired because they knew, it is impossible for undeads to make a “bigger” career out of it. Almost all current pro players, for example 120, Happy and Grubby (Even tho Grubby’s analysis goes a litlte bit deeper than this…) keep repeating that undead is the worst race. Undead has probably the worst popularity or playerbase of all races.

A little bit more down to the actual game; Undead has fragil oppurtunities for macro games, also for that reason, undead gets “lamed” alot, Undead doesn’t have backdoor mechanics like ultimates (or walking expansions) that can turn around a game completly. Undead struggles in a handfull of scenarios in the lategame if your don’t have much better micro than the opponent, while the opponent is literally just a-click+ground against what you have. Undead forgives very little mistakes. Undead can’t relie on “things that are overpowered”, you actually have to play better, and in alot of scenarios, extremly better than your opponent, since the enemy can relie just on a economic advantage.

Now things doesnt become “true” because everybody says it, but the direction is clearly visible, in my opinion.

The only thing, that might be true, is that undead is powerfull on mid- and highskilled level (even’tho the problems are not negated), but that is a whole different story on tournament- or godlike-skilllevel.

Edit: And I highly doubt that the W3Info data is “correct”, they took the data within a phase, where Ente, Nightend, Happy and even WaN laddered alot, they probably have over 5000 wins combined with very little lose procentage, of course undead looks strong with only these players being this dominant, while all other races, are fairly underrepresented with top players.

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180

Anyways. General Battle bet statistics dont tell anything because the only thing that showd balance is games by player who are professional and have tested all the stratigic. Options. As the comment after you say: it is inpossible for anyone to win any major tour as UD bacuse the game is imbalanced. It is crystal clear. Do you think nightend, happy, 120 loose on purpouse or dont want the tournament money? This discussion is ridicilous

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181

You are right. And what you say explains why undeads don’t win. Among professionals it is hard to get so much better than your opponent so you can outplay him by micro or be straight up better. Most pros play close to perfect and everyone micoes almost perfectly and then stratigic possibilities and imbalances show. It comes a point where you can’t outmicro or outplay players to the extent needed to counter imbalance. When that happens: ud loose because they are the worst race.

And if they balance this game the top undeads will win ALOT. Because they have played at a disadvantage for 10 years. Beeing used loosing as soon as you make ONE or even if you don’t make any mistake.

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182

As far as I know Sweet left for military service. Susiria had a very long career in WC3. He even stayed because the money he could make was sufficient. They never quit because undead was weak.

But I agree that undead has fragile oppurunities. That is what I mend when I said their playstyle is very linear. They reproduce the same style game after game and can’t really adjust well. But inflexibility is not the same as weakness (per se). Happy has one of the best ladder accounts; but probably the least variety in strategy. It is dreaded. I like playing UD for the robotic perfection but the different side of that same coin I can feel empty on how inflexible they can be.

We can always argue the sample group selected in that data. Perhaps some UD players were absent. If that is the case; the UD winrate would be even higher ;-). It is anyhow the closest estimate of ‘reality’ as we have and if we can’t establish a premise then attempting debate is pointless. Sample sizes are never perfect. They show UD is somewhat more powerfull. Perhaps that is off; but to state they are unarguably weak because of some examples isn’t sufficient. Far more likely is bias one experiences. No UD complains about HU and yet HU complains about HU. Simply because people tend to play 1 race with their style. They use this as their reference frame and establishes a paradigm. Me personally, I win on average 50% (random player), but only 42% with HU. But I don’t consider HU too weak. I know its just because of me, not because of the race. I also see HU potential when I play versus them with other races. Still, I am not without bias. But I tend to be less affected by cognitive dissonance.

@FongRuleZ
Happy indeed does not want tournament money. He doesn’t enjoy these tournaments at all so the cash incentive for him is insufficient to play.

The reason you see UD not win a lot is because of the normal distribution. You seem to interpret that if ud is played 22% of the cases, then 22% of the pro players will be undead. That is not sufficiently nuanced. I explained how this works in normal distribution. If the top is the 0.5% (regardless of race); then at the top 0.5% you have about 25 times less undeads due to the fact they are on average only slightly less popular (even if they are played only 22% instead of 25%). That is how normal distrubtions work. The ‘fun’ is in the extreme ends. For every 25 orcs, 25 elfs, 25 hu there will be 1 undead amongst the top 0.5%. Not because of imbalances, but because of normal distribution derived from a smaller population size. Which results in UDs winning 1,5% of the tournaments, simply because of the probability that from that smaller group there will be a fragement able to reach the hight of the larger overall group that includes all races.

Aggression between male/female is roughly 60/40. If someone engages in a some agression and you guess that person is male you are right 60% of the time. However; people in prision for aggressive assault situations are 99% male. Because of normal distribution; the top 1% you lock up all tend to be male despite the difference over the entire population is not so dispersed. The ‘fun’ is at the extremes. The relative small difference over the entire group as huge effects at the very extremes of that group.

I hope that make sense, I can’t really explain that more vividly. Perhaps read into normal distributions via google yourself if it still does not make sense.

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183

Despite whatever this discussion has told us, undead has some undeinable issues which are worth getting rid off, in my opinon.

Anyway, I was just thinking about giving the firelord his old incenerate back as it was years ago, it was a passive which did not cost any mana, it is probably too strong but on the other hand, there is almost no way to bring him out of his niche… Or decrease the manacost and give soulburn different stats, or make it undispellable, something like that.

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184

Look i am getting tiered of your trash talk. I know how a normal distribution works. You don’t seem du be able to listen to what people say. You try to be very logical, but you are not. Why? Because you don’t know WHY undead is less popular. You simply state ud is less popular and therefore less undead are pros. It is not logical or analytical to simply ignore WHY they are less popular. Usually in life when a product or anything I less popular there is a REASON for that, you seem to think it’s magic and just irellevant why they are less popular. For you it seems like it’s a natural axiom that by the natural laws ud is less popular. And you base your whole argument around that without asking why. Do you realize how stupid that is? I claim they are less popular because they are the worst race, and you have no argument against that other that what you think, feel or believe.

Second. You seem to over and over repeat yourself. For example: “ud is very linear”. Yes… WHY??? Again you don’t analyze WHY. Undead playing style is very linear because most units and heroes are not good enoug => one sided strategies.

Third. You think you can discard for example happy with that you don’t believe in him, yet you have zero merits and he is a pro.

It’s obvious you are

  1. Biased.
  2. More emotional than analytical even if you try to use math where it is completely irellevant.
  3. Why is it irellevant? Because you don’t care about WHY UDis less popular. They might be because they suck and people who played them serious quit or switch race, and then your little novels above are: irellevant. It is logical to assume that in a strategic competitive game races with a disadvantage gets less popular.

And finally the only player base that can be used for statistics is netease or pro gamer statistics. Why? Because if a persons suck and loose to UD it does not tell anything about the balance. Only professional players who have all strategic options tested are good representatives. Naturally balance is only possible to analyze collecting statistics from pro players or very good players. The results there are clear: undead does not win. Period. If my mom plays 1000 games as orc and looses every game to UD because she sucks at Warcraft, well that’s irellevant and destroys the statistics.why on earths name would strategy game balance be deducted from statistics based on 99% noobs? It’s absurd. I have 90% winrate with ud on US west and east. I barely get 60% winrate on EU server and I get crushed on netease. That’s how big the difference is.

Do you seriously base your whole argument on the win rate of an entire population of players??? Is it relevant if 11-year old hockey players win more with a certain stick but in the NHL other sticks are more effective. Mabye 11-year old kids should not reflect the effectiveness of hockey equipment?

Retard

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185

It indeed is relevant why there are less undeads. There can be a myriad of reasons. People might play it less because of a linear playstyle. It might be because UD was not playable in WC2. Perhaps people found the UD campaign the most boring. Perhaps people just like the visual and auditive experience of undead less. And yes, perhaps they play it less because they win less. But I find it incorrect to take that assumption for true while ignoring all others. Lets think that one true. Lets say undead wins less. As a result, people play the race less. Thus even less undeads will win. The race would fade out of sight. In addition I know of no stories in which HU swiched to UD because they felt UD was overpowered. The same for Orcs Switching to HU.

I have provided alternative motivations on why undead may be less popular, because I don’t see how your motivation is more likely to be correct compared to all the other options out there.

Linearity is not the same as weakness. By definition. We use a large sample size because then you account for outliers that just might happen to be terrible players.

Anyhow, you accuse me of bias while I have shown you none. You insult me and go at all cost to defend your own race. I am not saying you are wrong. I was just hoping to provide enough of an opening so you might want to consider you are more strongly responding to negative events (losses) than you do to positives (wins).

I am not going to responde to this anymore. You are hostile enough as it is and you cling to assumptions we cannot test. If we could, you would come up with a reason why it is false. You want undead to be weak. You will probably write a new post insulting me again telling me how I miss the obvious, but know I won’t read it. I gave it my honest intended and you just close your argument by calling me a retard. I just want the myriad of motivations for your observations to be set out properly and go from there. There is a difference. Anyhow. Enjoy your day. Good luck with warcraft because I don’t see major buffs incoming for undead, or nerfs at other races which specifically benefit UD. Time will tell.

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186

I’m sick of seeing a single volley of treants canceling expansions all over the map.

I probably die from stomach ulcers because of these kotg/alchemist plays with there balancetangle and balance bomb leading to balancequillity.

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187

People on discord say, that there is a PTR comming at the end of the month, I dont know if thats true, I don’t use social media and stuff.

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188

1.31 PTR will be the last version before Reforged BETA (my personal prediction).

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189

Link your source pls :grinning:

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