1.36.2.21146 PTR 3 Patch Notes

PTR Discussion and Bug Report
510

Nobody plays War3 for money. Sure, there are top tier players who earn some prizes from tournaments, but they aren’t making a living off it. If they are making a career out of gaming, War3 is little more than a footnote in their gaming resume. With War3 you can be sure that even the tournament contenders are playing the game out of passion and not profit.

Therefore, at the professional level, all the strengths and weaknesses of races and balance are more pronounced than at the amateur level.

This really isn’t true. There can easily be glaring and obvious imbalances at other levels of play that DON’T manifest at the pro level. There could easily be units not commonly used by pro players that are highly abusable at lower levels of play. Again, look at League of Legends. There are more than a few champions in any given patch that are either too strong in the low ranks and too weak in high ranks and pro play. There are also champions that are just univserally broken.

Balance is a more complex beast than you seem to believe, and the simple truth is that what’s best for pros is not always what’s best for everyone else. In fact, this is one of the reasons the game version is locked in way in advance for competitive events, because it’s actually better for competition that changes be made less frequently than on the official live release. But maintaining multiple versions for a game like this probably isn’t realistic.

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511

You don’t see any prospects. If you make a more perfect balance than now, you can increase the popularity of the game, increase the audience of amateur players and professionals playing in tournaments, and also significantly increase the number of sales of the game.

It seems to me that you think that if you improve the palladin, give alliance workers the opportunity to hide in farms, and make other changes that I wrote about, then playing as the undead will become much more difficult, which is why people will stop playing as them. No, they won’t stop.
You may also think that if the development of patches focuses on improving the balance in professional-level tournament games, then amateur players will become uncomfortable playing, they will stop playing Warcraft, after which Blizzard will lose even the small audience of amateur players that they have now. No, he won’t lose it. Increasing the professional balance of the game will automatically lead to an improvement in the amateur level of the game, because seeing that at the professional level the game has become more fair and balanced, amateur players will begin to improve their skills to the professional level, because at the professional level there is an incentive to earn money in tournaments .

It seems to me that you have some other example in your head when Blizzard did something similar with another game, because of which its audience decreased.
Show me where this happened with the same game?
It is not correct to compare different games of different genres.
Warcraft is a game of another level. To successfully play it in tournaments, you need not only to have many years of gaming experience, but also to be able to concentrate a large amount of attention, reaction, be able to change strategy on the fly, have flexibility of thinking, and be able to play without patterns.

I think that if we implement most of the changes that I suggested, and in general, when developing patches, we start from the game at the professional level of tournaments, then the game will become much better. The balance and interest of the game at a professional level will increase. Seeing this and wanting to receive prize money, part of the audience of amateur players will begin to improve their skills to a professional level, and then the audience of professional players will become larger than now. This will lead to an increase in tournament games and an increase in the popularity of Warcraft. And with the popularity of the game, sales of the game will also increase.
Everything is simple here.

It seems to me that Blizzard doesn’t do this because when developing games they are used to focusing on the audience of casual players and players who play games in games like Call of Duty very weakly. Therefore, it is unusual for her to target an audience of professional players. Therefore, Warcraft is developing little and slowly, and its audience is almost not growing.

There can easily be glaring and obvious imbalances at other levels of play that DON’T manifest at the pro level. There could easily be units not commonly used by pro players that are highly abusable at lower levels of play.

Give an example of such units?
There are no such units in Warcraft. It is not correct to compare Warcraft for development and LOL. These are completely different games. You think in patterns. You are trying to impose a pattern of problems that arise from one game onto another, this leads to the fact that you are inventing a problem that does not exist in this game and cannot arise because these are games of completely different genres.

In the balance of Warcraft, if something does not work or is ineffective at the professional level of the game, then it will certainly not work at the amateur level.
If one person (the first) starts using some units too often at the amateur level of the game, then his opponent (the second) will look at how this is dealt with at the professional level of the game, and use the same countermeasures. In this case, the first one will understand that his casual strategy no longer works, and will no longer abuse it. You are inventing problems out of the blue, trying to mistakenly superimpose the pattern of problems that arise in one game onto another game of a completely different genre.
This confirms my conclusion that when developing games, Blizzard most likely thinks the same way, and also focuses on the audience of casual players, and therefore Warcraft is slowly developing, and the audience of the game is not growing.

512

Balance is a broad topic, and both games derive from the same family. Balance is a topic that isn’t just for one kind of game, and so yes, comparisons can be made. Both games have a pro scene, both games have regular playerbases, and in both games, players in these different groups play differently (it’s not just a matter of mechanical skill, it’s a different mind game and different play styles).

There are tons of such units in Warcraft. There are many units that high level players don’t use but which are commonly used at lower levels- Especially with heroes- there are many differences in which heroes (some of the tavern heroes come to mind) are picked and what order they are picked in at different levels. And because players in different groups may use different heroes, there are balance issues that do not manifest at the pro level because the pros don’t often pick those heroes. Why? Those heroes don’t fit with the way they are approaching the game. But players at different levels take different approaches to the game and it is very easy for an imbalance not noticed by pros to appear.

I’ll be blunt: Who died and made you the all-knowing balance master? You’ve made some really questionable proposals, and I haven’t seen you present any credentials to suggest that you’re more qualified than anyone else here to address balance issues.

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513

However, these are completely different genres of games.
In Warcraft you need a much greater degree of concentration than in lol. You need the ability to simultaneously control several groups of units in several parts of the map. You need to plan resource extraction systems, protect them, and change your strategy on the fly depending on the amount of resources that have changed or the artifacts obtained. You need to be able to think without templates, because any templates in Warcraft are ineffective if the second player knows how to change his strategy on the fly.
Therefore, these are two completely different games. It is incorrect to apply the templates of one game and problems to another because the other game does not have such problems.

There are tons of such units in Warcraft. There are many units that high level players don’t use but which are commonly used at lower levels-

Give two examples of such units and what strategies are used with them?
I have already said that if something does not work at the professional level of balance in Warcraft, then it will certainly not work at the amateur level, because if someone uses a primitive or casual strategy at the amateur level, then his opponent will see how they fight it at the professional level and will apply the same countermeasures.

Even if some strategies that do not work at the professional level work at the amateur level, then for amateur players this will be a useful incentive to improve their skills in the game to a higher level. Not to the level of professional tournaments, but enough to effectively combat such strategies. This will lead to the fact that there will be more high-level players, there will be more competition for those tournament players who play in tournaments now, there will be more tournaments, Warcraft will become more visible and popular, and along with this its sales will increase.
But I think there are no such strategies. Give me two examples of such strategies. You won’t bring it.

I’ll be blunt: Who died and made you the all-knowing balance master? You’ve made some really questionable proposals, and I haven’t seen you present any credentials to suggest that you’re more qualified than anyone else here to address balance issues.

I’ve been watching Warcraft tournaments for over 20 years since its introduction in 2002. I have 20 years of experience watching Warcraft tournaments.

Question: do you have anything to do with the development of patches for Warcraft 3 or can you significantly influence the developers of these patches?

514

Watching tournaments doesn’t make you a balance expert. Watching tournaments doesn’t give you gameplay experience. You need to actually play the game to do that. Sooo, what was the last prize-bearing tournament you won?

Now, I’ve said many times that we need to balance for everyone, and even pros have different opinions on balance. Thus to really identify a balance issue and to fix it, we need consensus- we need many people from different levels of experience and skill to agree. Which is a tall ask, but it does happen. So far I’ve not seen a lot of agreement with your proposals. And I definitely haven’t found many of yours to agree with either.

You are acting as if you’re some kind of authority figure, but your claim of authority is based on… watching tournaments. I’m not saying that doesn’t give any insight- but it’s not enough by itself.

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515

Really?

Is it necessary to be able to swim yourself in order to prepare an Olympic champion in swimming so that after that he would win several gold medals in competitions?

Do you need to be able to make films yourself in order to say that this or that film is boring and uninteresting rubbish?

Now, I’ve said many times that we need to balance for everyone, and even pros have different opinions on balance.

Give examples?

Thus to really identify a balance issue and to fix it, we need consensus- we need many people from different levels of experience and skill to agree. Which is a tall ask, but it does happen. So far I’ve not seen a lot of agreement with your proposals. And I definitely haven’t found many of yours to agree with either.

So organize a vote among the most competent people in this matter. For example, among the 30 most professional Warcraft players participating in tournaments. And you will see that they will support my ideas.

You are acting as if you’re some kind of authority figure, but your claim of authority is based on… watching tournaments. I’m not saying that doesn’t give any insight- but it’s not enough by itself.

I am an expert in another field. In history and psychology. In Russia, I am the only one who writes anti-communist and anti-militarist articles on history, involving research and comments from the most competent doctors of historical science, academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences, history professors, and international historians.
In order to write such articles, you need not only deep historical knowledge and intelligence significantly above average, but also to have “systems thinking”, in which you need to keep a large number of components in your head at once, and evaluate a situation or historical phenomenon as objectively as possible.
No one except me in Russia writes articles of this level until now.

In order to correctly and objectively evaluate whether a balance is good or bad, you need to have systems thinking.

I’ll leave this here just in case. In Russia, I am the only one who writes anti-communist and anti-militarist articles involving research by academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences, international historians, and independent historians with reputation
/2ch.hk /b/arch/2019-05-09/res/196047956.html
/2ch.hk/b/arch/2019-06-04/res/197579433.html
/2ch.hk/b/arch/2019-10-02 /res/204744208.html
/2ch.hk/b/arch/2020-05-18/res/220482213.html
/2ch.hk/b/arch/2019-06-28/res/199008745.html
/2ch.hk /b/arch/2021-01-05/res/236991191.html
Watching Warcraft tournaments is perhaps the only joy in life that gives me serotonin and dopamine.
Serotonin and dopamine give me the ability to work and the ability to write articles that are sometimes read in the Kremlin. I saw signs that even Putin was reading my articles.
Perhaps I could write articles that could stop the war in Ukraine, or encourage Putin to stop the course of building an aggressive dictatorial state that he is pursuing now. But I don’t have enough dopamine and serotonin for this because, due to my health, I am a depressed disabled person.

Changing the balance of tournament warcraft could result in giving me more serotonin and dopamine to write these articles in time. For example, before Putin decides to launch a nuclear strike on Ukraine or a nuclear war.
No matter how paradoxical it may sound, to some extent the fate of several countries, or even the whole world (without jokes and trolling) indirectly depends on whether the balance in professional tournament Warcraft 3 is changed for the better.

What if I don’t have enough serotonin and dopamine to write these articles, and if they ask me why I didn’t write these articles on time? I will answer “Unfortunately, in the depressive state I was in then, I did not have enough serotonin and dopamine for this. One of the big reasons for this was that the developers did not improve the balance of professional tournament Warcraft 3 from watching which I then received serotonin and dopamine most of all."
I’m not crazy or schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur. I’m just saying it as it really is. If this happens, then over time I will write about it in my live journal
/soloninoforcer.livejournal.com/1178.html.

516

I’m not saying that it doesn’t contribute anything, but saying “I watch tournaments” is hardly meaningful by itself. Experience playing with all the races and in fact all race matchups, means a lot more to me. You don’t have to be “good,” you just have to have the experience that comes from seeing everything first hand (or in some cases, not really seeing underutilized units as well)

Films are not interactive. Your comparison is flawed- It would be like me saying that you need to make games to be knowledgable about balancing them (which I would say helps, but is hardly a requirement). Since you can’t “play” a movie, your comparison makes no sense.

Ask them yourself. I guarantee they won’t all tell you the same things. Everyone has an opinion, that includes pros. But just because they are pros doesn’t mean they are all going to have the same opinions about everything. That’s just common sense. If you’ve been watching tournaments for 20 years, surely you can interview some of those people you watch.

517

In my case, I said why the experience of 20 years of watching tournaments suggests that I know how to best balance Warcraft, because I have systems thinking in which, in order to have the most objective view of something, I need to keep a large number of elements in my head at once.

Films are not interactive. Your comparison is flawed- It would be like me saying that you need to make games to be knowledgable about balancing them (which I would say helps, but is hardly a requirement). Since you can’t “play” a movie, your comparison makes no sense.

Like I said, I have some experience with balancing 3 games. I came up with changes for them and after adding them the game became better.

  1. I was balancing the largest and most global mod for stalker “United pack 2.1” and “2.2” (OP-2.1). And after my changes he became better.
  2. I came up with some changes for the survival game “The Long Dark”, and now the developers are adding them.
  3. I came up with several changes for the mod for BF-2 “Forgotten Hopes 2” which the developers implemented and the game became better.
    I have some experience successfully balancing games.

Ask them yourself. I guarantee they won’t all tell you the same things.

You can’t give examples. This means there are no such units in Warcraft.

518

I think that as a warcraft 3 fan and player, after the third patch adjustments, after hearing the opinion of big warcraft 3 community players (like grubby and the Back2Warcraft guys) and considering that I have always believed that Warcraft 3 has always been about having 4 ridiculously strong races where each have several things that are overpowered but that for some reason they are all relatively balanced, I personally feel more comfortable now with the PTR 3 patch notes, EXCEPT for the removal of Healling scroll from the undead shop.

ORC RACE FEEDBACK:
Like, I’m glad to hear that taurens are going to be T3 again because, having them as T2 just defeated the purpose where all races had to get to T3 to get a particular unit. Of course the units of T3 for each race are different, but they all had to get to T3 for that. So reverting taurens T2 back to T3 makes things even for all races in my opinion.

UNDEAD RACE FEEDBACK:
However, I do not understand the reasoning of removing healling scroll from the undead shop. Like, I have heard from big warcraft 3 community players saying “that this change was something they wanted for a long time” but none of them are actually main undead players. So, I don’t know if removing healling scroll is just something a segment of the warcraft player base wanted just because they considered undead race to be boring or something like that, or if this is a balance change to make undead race less capable against all races.

The reason I think that the removal of healling scroll will make the undead race drastically less capable is this: So, the undead race has basically only 2 realistic choices for main ground units: 1) fiends or 2) ghouls (aboms are T3, expensive and take time produce; need something else before T3 for undead army in the meantime also). Now, I think fiends are not seen as often as ghouls even within pro undead players because it just makes sense. Friends are a bit expensive or perhaps not as good as ghouls for using them as often because fiends are vulnerable to the attack type of the main ground units of all other races except night elves, where night elves are probably evenly matched with the undead in that aspect until T3 with bears, if undead sticks to fiends as main ground unit. However, night elves can start producing druids of the claw in T2 and, therefore, start making their ground army to counter fiends such that they are all converted to that counter (which are bears) once night elves reach T3. To that point, that makes the game hard for undead if they decide to go only fiends since the start of the game, but which can be evenly matched if undead mass produces destros. So, if you see, under this logic, going fiends as main ground unit is sort of even against night elves, but this is not true against other races, where humans can make things rough for fiends with footmen (and later nights) and orcs with grunts from the begining of the game, making fiends not an attractive main ground army. Now, this does happen with ghouls. However, ghouls are weak and require a huge amount of micro compared to other races to make them playable the longer the game goes. So, for those that are mad at current ghouls… Dude I think that those undead players that developed the micro to play them well can still crush that mad people even with another race. Anyways, I believe that only pro players at top level, and very likely, only Happy…, can probably still make the undead race playable with ghouls as main ground unit after removing healling scroll, but this will not be true for most main undead players. Ghouls have very low hp and by T3 they can be easily killed by heroes and many thing in the game by other races. So, for a non-Happy undead player, using healling scroll to keep ghouls in the game are basically a must.

I honestly think that because of this reasoning, removing healling scroll and forcing the undead to fight for it in the mercenary shop will render ghouls useless/powerless if they can’t win that item over the other players, and will force undead players to play fiends more often, but which will ultimately make undead race considerably weaker, except for Happy maybe, but it is unfair to nerf a race just because one player I more skill than all the others.

Also, I think that as a main undead player, I just can’t see myself buying staff of negation honestly, instead of destros. Like it’s not like summoning units are like a huge problem for undeads in t1 or T2 like to buy that expensive item, and if I’m forced to build temple of the damned… Honestly I would rather make banshees and use antimagic shield rather than staff of negation because: 1) it honestly is expensive and 2) it has only 2 charges. I heard from big warcraft 3 community players that this item was OP, but… I just can’t see why, since I think most main undead players will either go antimagic shield or destros anyways instead of staff of negation. But, like if you guys want to give a genuine alternative path to undeads rather than destros (which will not happen most certainly and specially if now undeads are forced to play fiends instead of ghouls), maybe try something else like, I don’t know, make staff of negation not consumable, but to have a considerable cool down and maybe make it very expensive instead… Or revert that change and give back healling scroll haha.

SUMMARY:
Anyways, this is my feedback. Generally speaking I like more PTR 3 than PTR 2 and 1, but I do not agree with the removal of healling scroll since I believe that it will render ghouls useless already regardless of the nerfs it received this patch.

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519

I recently wrote a list of over 49 things to improve Warcraft.

But people believe that many of these points are dubious, and developers are afraid to introduce any of this so as not to upset the existing balance and not lose the existing audience of players.

What if you create two versions of a patch for Warcraft? One official one in which there will be those changes that the developers have already announced in patch 1.36.2, and the second experimental version of the patch in which everything will be introduced, or some changes that I proposed, and are also proposed by other players?

Write what you think about this in my thread.
And like my thread and this post if you like this experimental patch idea.

520

I can give examples. But you’re just going to make a long convoluted post about why I’m wrong, as you have with every other post I’ve made. So why should I bother?

This is aside from the fact that me not giving examples doesn’t mean they don’t exist. You are simply projecting your belief to the contrary.

We already have this. It’s called the Public Test Realm. And by some amazing coincidence… that’s what this forum section is about.

Look one of the main reasons you’re getting so much pushback here is because you’ve created a long list of opinions that few if any other people have come out agreeing with. I’ve questioned some (though not all) of your ideas. No one else has come out saying I’m wrong here but you. That doesn’t automatically make me right, but right now I basically seeing 0 people agreeing with you and 1 person arguing against. This isn’t a large enough sample size obviously, but the lack of responses in general aside from me tells me no one’s all that enthusiastic about it for or against.

522

Hi.

  1. Make the max damage that fireflies can do when dispelling, as well as the max amount of mana they can burn. It’s ridiculous that 1 wisps can kill 10 skeletons and still burn 1000 mana to necromancers. This is also why players and undead don’t play mages.
    All dispel has limitations except wisps.
  2. moon wells that instantly restore this OP. Make them regenerate for at least 5 seconds with the ability to remove healing on dispelled.
  3. Corpsewagons can be given the ability to spread the land of the dead when shot when improving on spoil. It’s cool.
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523

you say"120 and all the Udam will simply refuse to play as the undead"

NE, who has been suppressed by UD for many years, will be very happy to hear this

They may say, can you promise me that I will never come back to play UD.
Therefore, NE can hold a grand party

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524

UD has basically monopolized the championship for the past three years
why can’t’ you become top UD player?
The less you can become a top UD player, the fewer top UD players there will be

eer0 is Orc turn to UD
Happy,TED,Sweet seems to have been NE before
Forcing others to turn to UD is a good way for UD to win the championship

1 Like
525

Each race has its own style of play and its own tactics, which may not be convenient or pleasant for different players. To play for the undead, it is necessary that all tactics for them be comfortable and pleasant for the player playing them, and if they are not pleasant, then their quality of execution will drop.

In addition, many people associate the undead with vile scoundrels and dishonest villains. This is hinted at by the name of the dead knight’s aura. Because of this, purely psychologically, many people find it unpleasant to play for the “race of villains.”

This does not mean that players playing for the undead are villains or scoundrels, but it also does not negate the fact that playing for the “race of villains” is not pleasant for many people.

Therefore, there are few undead players.

526

Still no fix for the problem of being unable to see your opponent’s race during the loading screen because it’s too fast? How hard can it be to add a 5 second delay after the game has loaded for both players?

528

It is already impossible to defeat the Warden by Human, but you still want to buff warden and spring moon! It makes no sense!

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529

Keep in mind that a lot of players are from Chinese, Korean and Russian communities. Their English ability can be limited. So when adjust from PTR, please stop listening to Grubby and b2w along. They haven’t been active players for long. Maybe ask opinion from those who play random and semi-retired, e.g. INFI, Simmons, TH000, TGW. Even starbucks may provide valuable feedback. The opinion from these who only play one race can be very biased. For example, Grubby only understand orc related match ups.

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530

Before the official patch is released, I think Blizzard still has the opportunity to make more players stick to this game, instead of everyone choosing humans and Orcs to play Warcraft 3 in the end. It’s better to play Warcraft 1 or Warcraft 2 instead. So, consider all the enhancements to humans and Orcs in PTR and all the weakens to undead and night elves, and roll back the data or stop making bad changes in the official patch

531

I support.
Grubby hasn’t played tournaments at all for many years. Therefore, his opinions on how Warcraft should be changed can harm tournament games.

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