Am shall buff

PTR Discussion and Bug Report
1

Given the current “bottom-tier” status of Human in this patch, it’s really time for some buffs. I think the Archmage definitely deserves one.

The Archmage has long been at a disadvantage against Orc. Against Undead, he’s almost useless in the late game—basically just a walking Brilliance Aura / item carrier, and an easy target to get picked off. In the current version, Human gets completely crushed by Night Elf at equal skill levels.

This situation is closely tied to how the Archmage’s other abilities are extremely weak as a “trade-off” for Brilliance Aura. Water Elemental is arguably the weakest summon in the game, and Blizzard is a mediocre AoE spell (a fragile caster that has to stand still to channel it). Meanwhile, after the aura nerf, Brilliance Aura is no longer essential—especially in matchups like Human vs Undead where you don’t even go for arcane Sanctum. In fact, the Archmage can even be replaced by the neutral Firelord.

So it’s definitely time to buff the Archmage. Considering buffing Water Elemental would obviously change hum vs ud, so I suggest buffing Blizzard instead.

Specifically: increase Blizzard’s damage from 30/40/50 to 30/50/70, and make the duration fixed at 8 seconds.

This change would mainly affect the currently skewed Human vs Night Elf matchup, and would have little impact on the other two matchups. First of all, the current damage scaling (30/40/50) is clearly too low. A 33% scaling for an AoE ability is almost unheard of—only Chain Lightning has similar scaling, but it compensates by increasing the number of targets, so its total damage scaling is actually higher than 33%.

Also, the current duration scaling (6/8/10 seconds) is kind of awkward. A 10-second Blizzard is only really useful for hitting buildings, while in most cases the cooldown doesn’t justify needing such a long duration. So fixing the duration at 8 seconds (or even 7 or 6) would be more reasonable, and the damage scaling should be improved accordingly.

Overall, this buff would only benefit game balance. Hum vs Ne (or maybe a bit vs Orc) gonna be a bit easier. Nothing else changed.

1 Like
2

You are joking, right?

2 Likes
3

aura 2nd lvl should be 1.35, 1.25 was too strong nerf

elems also overnerfed

4

By reducing duration and increasing damage you are not really solving any problems. Blizzard spell is hard to use since it damages your own units, for teams vs teams its not bad when there are a lot of units. But in 1vs1 its only good in late game.

This is how I would solve Archmage and Jaina since nobody ever gets both Blizzard and Water elemental, instead its always aura+blizzard or aura+water elemental. People want more spells early and these suggestions also solves that. In WoW classic Blizzard spell doesn’t deal friendly fire and it’s fun when the duration is long, because you are supposed to move out from it. Blizzard spell has always been long duration even for Warcraft 2, you should not reduce the duration since you are removing the epicness of the spell then.

5

Every spell that takes “time” to deal damage hurts your units. Original developer told me that’s because you have time to react and move your units. They should not change that.

6

Alchemist Healing spray channelled spell previously healed enemy units which was the same issue but the other way around. It took almost 14 years until somebody finally fixed it. Tinker cluster rockets is also a channelled spell but doesn’t deal damage to your own units. There are many more channelled spells, like far seer earthquake previously targeted your own units but it was then finally fixed after many years. You got the firelord volcano also.
As for Lich “Death and Decay”, which is also a spell from Warcraft 2, it’s tricky because the damage is quite high, only way I would agree to make it deal no friendly fire (Remove target “friend” but keep target “self”) would be if the duration was reduced from 35 seconds to maybe 20 seconds. I have not suggested that “Death and Decay” should deal no friendly fire, because it’s an ultimate ability which was buffed by reducing mana cost from 250 to 200 and Lich already has Frost Nova which deals no friendly fire. The only thing I suggest for Lich is to reduce his animation “cast backswing”.
As for Flamestrike of Blood Mage the mana cost was reduced “recently” by 10 and cast time by 0.1 which is okay but not perfect. Blood Mage is never picked first but I think Flamestrike should still do friendly fire, so don’t change it. What I instead already suggested for Blood mage is that animation “cast point” and “cast backswing” should be reduced because he is very sluggish because the values are currently set too high. Blood mage has many spells which are all used during combat (he has no passive ability like other humans heroes). He is an elf so he is supposed to be agile.

Keep in mind that my suggestions for “Blizzard spell” and “Rain of fire spell” is to remove friendly fire by removing target “Friend” but keep target “Self”. This means archmage will still take damage from Blizzard if he casts it on himself, but removes friendly fire when he casts it on his water elementals, militia and other friendly units (He can save others from death, but not himself… :grin:). And then by increasing mana cost by 5 and slight nerf to brilliance aura level 3 it will make archmage and Jaina more fun since it allows for more playstyles. My suggestions also fixes the current mass spell breaker tactic, since your other units such as knights won’t take damage from your Blizzard spell it will encourage you to make more different types of units.

7

I am a HU player but no thanks. AM is fine as it is. Better nerf little BM and improve some mechanical units in the late game. For example, adding an extra upgrade that’s more expensive and takes longer to research.