A few more balance and Quality of Life changes

PTR Discussion and Bug Report
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Hello there!

Some discussion about the balance changes is going on in other communities. For example this:

Increase the area of effect on Ritual Dagger so that it matches the effect of Heal scroll.

The item is already clunky to use. You have to position the unit you sacrifice in the middle of your army before you use it. And the range is still quite small. This requires a lot of action just to make sure you end up healing your own units. A bigger area of effect will unlikely affect balance significantly, but it would go a long way to improve this otherwise very clunky to use item.

Add a 2 second cooldown to Devour from Kodo beast.
I don’t think anyone has Kodo beasts on their radar when talking balance. But in my opinion, adding a simple 2 second cooldown on Devour would help a lot. Right now, you can “dodge” devour by simply moving the unit away from the Kodo. But given there is no cooldown, all the Orc player has to do is to click devour on your unit again. He could even queue up the command multiple times.

Devour is a very strong ability, especially in the Orc vs UD matchup which is slightly favouring the Orc player at the moment. See official interviews from the pro players for this. The Kodo beast prevents more usage of Abominations, which would otherwise work well against the usual mass Troll Headhunter usage of the Orc in this matchup. Adding a small cooldown would still allow Kodo beasts to devour ensnared or stomped units. Speedscroll allows a cheap escape as soon as an Abomination is devoured. The Kodo beasts also prevents usage of Bears in the Nightelf vs Orc matchup. Right now this matchup is all about Archers and Huntresses - for the whole game usually. To ensure more variety, and allow Nightelf more Bear usasge, I think this change would also go a long way.

We’re still hoping for changes to Necromancers, Ghouls and especially Frost Wyrms, but these can be tested at a later time.

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Hi Basilisk!

I agree that there we still can think about how to make quality life changes for UD.

Ritual Dagger. You point about the range of use makes sense to me. Also, we can analyse how to make the dagger to be a useful (still rarely bought) item for UD.

(1) UD doesn’t buy dagger from the shop right away, because UD needs skellies (150 gold) and there are no 125 gold to spend on a item which you carry and may not need at all.

(2) The only situation when a (pro) player needs such item is when in the early game their hero (and army) lost a lot of hp and you need to heal them. You sacrifice a skellie and use the dagger once. Most of the time you don’t need it again and you keep carrying the item with one charge in your inventory. Note: I saw Happy buying the dagger, use 1 charge and sell the rest back.

Quality of life changes: You don’t need two charges on this item. You need only one charge, but make it cost less gold, like 75. It could heal 180 hp per 45 seconds, which is 4 hp per second.

Ghouls. Consider T1 low hp units: archers, footmen, and headhunters. They all have utility in the late game due to Elune’s grace, high armor+defend, +100 hp upgrade. A similar passive ability like Elune’s grace to withstand magic and spell damage (not piercing!) will make ghouls a bit more durable in the late game.

Quality of life changes:
(1) reduce cannibalise research time from 30 to 20 seconds

(2) give ghouls a passive ability granting X% magic resistance

Necromancers. Necromancers and their raise dead have a direct counter: AoE dispel. It is fine, because this is what dispel is supposed to do. But on top of that aoe dispel quickly raises opponent’s hero levels.

Quality of life changes: Skeletal Mastery should provide skeletons the following bonus: if a skeleton warrior or mage is killed with a dispel, only X% of the experience is given to the opponent.

2 Likes
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Hello SaveOrcas! Nice to see you’re still around.

I agree the dagger is probably not an item you would buy pre-emptively, similarly to how Human only buys a scroll of regen when its needed. I also think its quite an interesting decision to give this item 2 charges instead of making it cheaper with 1 charge. Its not a bad idea though. If you are to play without a DK and want to move out on the map with Fiends, you will need more than 1 charge. And yes, the healing takes very long for both charges.

I expect if we are to see non-DK first strategies, its going to be the Crypt Lord with beetle summons and Skeletons. He does creep similar to a Keeper of the Grove with his new changes so you won’t need a lot of healing since only your Skeletons or summons take damage. The Dreadlord expand has been figured out now and it turned out to simply have too many holes and is not viable at highest level and too easily punished for too little gain.

Therefore, I would only suggest to increase the range on Ritual Dagger and see how it affects Crypt Lord first strategies.

I agree, Ghouls need changes. Every single unit and hero which goes up against Ghouls has either been buffed or received tweaks. With Archers getting +15 HP, Farseer getting buffed, Water Elemental Damage increased, Keeper with entangle, Ghouls are simply too fragile to move out on the map with other than for creeping. Its a simple case of powercreep and buffs to other units.

I disagree with giving some sort of magic resistance to Ghouls. You already have access to Anti-Magic Shield from the Banshee. I say: Give Ghouls +2 armor and +20 HP baseline. The armor is especially helpful because it increases the value of healing from cannibalize, vampiric aura, coils, statues etc. With 360 hitpoints, its also a bit better to use Death Coil on Ghouls than with 340 HP because you’re going to heal more HP on average. I would still like Ghouls with 400 HP, maybe from an upgrade on t3 and move Frenzy to t2 to make them a real frontline unit, but that might be too much. Lowering research time of cannibalize is a smart suggestion.

Not sure about the exp changes. I don’t think this is a change which blizzard would do given its very complicated and unintuitive. And from a design standpoints its weird. Why make something complicated if you can achieve a similar result in a simple way?

For Necromancers I recommend the following first:

Increase hitpoints by 45. That will bring them to the same hitpoints as Shamans. They have the same damage output, but Shamans are still cheaper in gold cost. Then I would like to see a real rework. Cripple needs to be a useful spell. Whether its Cripple first or Raise dead first is hard to say. Unholy Frenzy the best spell at the moment, so its questionable. Cripple definately needs a big buff. Should it be the first spell like in the last rework? Necromancers were almost a good unit. It simply needed stat tweaks and the spells needed number tweaks, but Blizzard abandoned the idea too quickly. Unholy Frenzy needs to stay in its current form.

In my opinion Cripple should be the first spell. All good casters like Shamans and Sorcs have a crowd control spell right from the get-go. Same needs to happen to Necromancers for them to be viable. If you want to go for Skeletons, its either mass Necromancers or you might aswell have used Rod of Necromancy. That is bad design. Caster units should be useful in small numbers and not required to be massed to be useful. Adept should be raise Skeleton. And the Skeleton Mage should be baseline in my opinion, same with additional Duration. Given Raise Dead would be adept, it makes sense to add these upgrades into the kit. Unholy Frenzy would be master spell and maybe you could reduce the HP per second drain by 1 or 0.5.

Again, Necros need a rework. There are some instances like Pitlord + Unholy frenzy which can work. But thats simply because of the Pitlord and Cleave supported by Unholy Frenzy. Its not about Necromancers and Skeletons at that point. So I say its fine to move Unholy Frenzy to t3 and add Cripple on Apprentice and move Raise Skeleton to Adept level while making Cripple a useful spell and adding Skeletal mastery baseline since Skeletons are at Adept level.

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Hi Basilisk! I’ve read your reply and I would like to comment on it. Maybe it would be helpful for you. Note: it is my opinion. I can be biased and partially ignorant about W3 balance.

Dagger. I agree the idea of 2 charges might be cool and this way the dagger is an asymmetric item for UD. Still I don’t see the need in the 2nd charge too much in all UD strats. I am not talking about CL, because this hero is an uncharted territory - let’s wait for the upcoming patch. And, indeed, the range on the dagger should be adjusted if it will be tested to be too short.

Ghouls. They certainly could get a slight buff, because ghouls aren’t meta at all these days. But which way? Frankly, I don’t have the answer.

Blizzard has two upgrades for ghouls: cannibalise on T1 and frenzy on T3. They don’t want to change them too much. They don’t want to create neither a new T2 third upgrade, nor bring frenzy from T3 to T2. The main feeling of the community that ghouls are a bit too fragile. So what are possible options?

I can only think of:

(1) Add passive ability to survive
(2) Add hp/armor from the start or at some stage of the game (a suggestion of yours)
(3) Add movespeed before T3 to escape from fights

(1) I thought of a passive magic resistance (similar to archer’s Elune grace but without reducing piercing damage) because ghouls will have a bit more durability against hero-range-casters armies.
In the early game this passive ability doesn’t give ghouls any advantage, because casters become part of the army in the mid-late game. And, say 20% resistance to hero spells in any match-up: UD vs HU, UD vs ORC, UD vs NE will not suddenly tilt the balance.

Your comment about AM shield doesn’t make any sense. UD gets banshees only in the late game. One casts AM shield on heroes and beefy units for the big (last) fight.

(2) Ghouls are decent in the early game, so if we add hp, we can add at most 10 hp baseline. This needs to be tested.

Another option is for ghouls to acquire + X hp from the cannibalise upgrade. This makes sense to me. Then aboms should get + Y hp from this upgrade too. Do we need to change the cost of the upgrade then?

(3) Movespeed ghouls get from Unholy aura and from frenzy upgrade. We could make cannibalize grant +20 ms to ghouls and aboms and reduce frenzy movespeed buff. Not sure. You can see here how much UD relies on DK aura, and how any movespeed buff is amplified by the aura.

What definitely can be done is reducing the research time for cannibalise from 30 to 20 seconds, match it with sentinel research time.

Necromancers. I think you are day dreaming when you talk about +45 hp to necromancers. They are casters in the back line of UD army, getting hp and mana from statues. You can’t buff their hp to the level of orc’s shamans, because orc doesn’t have much access to healing. Heal salve and SH’s heal is very costly.

You should look at Syde’s games (he plays necromancers with some success) and see why necromancers fail. It is an expensive build that usually needs two bases. And if your first attack with necrowagons fails you are pretty much doomed. The opponent heroes get + 2 levels each and it is gg.

That is why, I believe Skeletal Mastery, which is a core upgrade and a prerequisite for this strategy should decrease the experience granted for killing skeletons. If I am not mistaken, two skellies of level 1, gives out 50 xp. If you reduce that by 20%, that would be equivalent to 40 xp - the amount of xp given for a level 2 unit.

Your last suggestion: make Necromancers have raise dead and cripple to be the first two spells, unholy frenzy (with no hp reduction) becomes the master spell is worth considering. But only through a long PTR testing period :slight_smile: and by pro-gamers.

1 Like
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You are probably correct with the +45 Hitpoints on Necromancers, its unlikely to happen.

In my opinion Ghouls need more armor and more hitpoints. We currently see ranged piercing damage dominate the game for many races. Especialy with heroes like the alchemists which enables any kind of damage. Ghouls don’t do well against piercing damage units at all because they die too quickly and usually ranged units are backed up by Alchemists, or a Naga, or other slow options. Ghouls don’t have an ability like defend so they simply die to anything.

I agree with making Cannibalize research faster. Also when it comes to Necromancers, one thing blizzard has mentioned in the past is the whole UD tech tree rework. We got tech tree changes for all races now, switched some building requirements and upgrades. Especially for Orc this has worked out to their advantage. At minimum Frost Wyrms need changes and need to be made more accessible, so changing the Sacrificial pit requirement is a must-have change already.

An idea which has been thrown around a lot is moving Statues to Temple of the Dammned. It doesn’t really make sense that they are build from a slaughterhouse. The Meat Wagon has effectively dissapeared from the game unless you are going up against tanks or Tower push. If UD wants to siege, using the Pitlord with rain of fire is the way to go now. Meat Wagons are slow, have only 380 hitpoints, can’t be healed and grant a ton of exp. The Slaughterhouse is only being used to build statues until t3. Part of making Necros more accessible is to move statues to the temple. To compensate for this, you could increase the cost of the temple and reduce the cost of the slaughterhouse by the same amount, so it evens out. You could still build the slaughterhouse on t2 of course, so Abominations won’t be build later.

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Mind if a rookie undead pitched some ideas around? I’m almost PvE exclusive so i don’t know Exactly what (or how much) these idea’s would affect so could you give me an opinion? My idea’s are exclusive for the few unit’s I use, but maybe those ideas’ll be good.

Ghouls: oh yeah, these guys could use a buff, I like your idea for the Armor and health; but on a previous match against a computer, there T3 damage output just seems lacking. with still low damage and only Ghoul Frenzy to compensate, even a single upgrade to their targets Armor can be crippling; i’d say “make them cost 1 supply and lower their health and damage slightly” but explaining something like a Zergling would be highly frowned upon here (that, and they’d gather lumber Way too fast). TBH I was thinking that they could gain a larger bonus from damage upgrades, or even a 3+ damage with Ghoul Frenzy.

Necromancer: Liking the idea’s here! the Mancers main problem for me is microing them out of harms way (getting them out from under an imminent mortar for example, Stupid Computer always targets them first with that!) but eventually I’ll get that down. you were talking about a buff to Cripple, I used that ability earlier today; an enemy hero showed and I used this, And I think its the only reason my Dark Ranger survived. I wouldn’t mind a slightly longer duration, or a slight increase in movement speed reduction; I’d say disable Mana Regen, but that’s probably too much to ask for.

as for other units, I use the Crypt Fiend and The Abomination and I can’t think of any changes for them (or needed for them); I used to use Gargoyles, but the crypt fiends take away a major use for having them.