Elf went from broken 1.30 mgs to worst competitive race

Competitive Multiplayer
1

Vs HU:
/en/warcraft3/t/why-human-is-imba-against-nightelf/7756
r/WC3/comments/e19zxf/ne_vs_hu_011_so_far/
r/WC3/comments/e1x6dm/winning_percentage_of_th000_and_infi_against_ne/
r/WC3/comments/e6chry/being_a_ne_players_be_like/
r/WC3/comments/c808t6/ne_strategies_changes_after_wgl_as_a_middle_tier/
r/WC3/comments/bh9hfy/ne_bear_nerf/
r/WC3/comments/cfbyuf/the_assault_riflemen/
r/WC3/comments/bi8p2a/my_thoughts_on_current_ne/
r/WC3/comments/dnqey6/state_of_elf_vs_hu_at_top_scene/
r/WC3/comments/chqqw0/meme_ne_vs_hum_be_like/

Vs UD:
youtube com/watch?v=sPpz566a69w
Lawliet states even himself that “Panda is dead” at 0:52 (check transcripts if you don’t believe me)
He pretty much states Panda is now useless in most scenarios as at 1:34
"
Panda is dead, really
…
But if you play Panda in Echo Isles of Amazonia… You will suffer
Panda can’t crush opponent’s expo
Panda’s dmg has been nerfed
So you can’t
Panda can no more crush tower
With Blight and Unholy aura
and Obsidian’s heal
Dmg of fire can be restored quickly
So never pick Panda in small map
"
This was a MU that was considered UD’s best MU in 1.26 with Elf having 2 base vs UD’s 1 base. So for UD to be able to get an expo for free with current panda, it shows panda is overnerfed.

Vs Orc (or more like mass tier 1 hunts vs Orc buildings):
Games all about “do anything to avoid engagement” and base race keeper + alchemist mass hunts now. Most engagement more or less results in a loss even with far higher food supply due to shamans and serpent wards. In fact, games of Moon vs Lyn showed that even if there is an almost 30 more supply and heal + protection scroll, orc will generally win the direct fight.
In fact, in this game, even with a fountain in the back, NE is unable to fight with 70 food Hunts 2-2 vs mostly shamans and serpents.
clips . twitch . tv /ComfortableExpensiveLEDPlanking

As for talons…
Fortified towers/shamans/serpent wards has completely removed talons from game as Orc has no structural weakness to prevent raider laming or expanding. In 1.28 at top scene, Orc was already favoured vs talons. Even lawliet admitted this during his stream and it was then he commented “Blizzard balance team seem to have no regards for pro scene”. Fortified essentially removed the potential for Elf to force Orc to engage at home (and deny expoing) while Orc is still able to raider lame with pillage on moonwells. Add in 2 fortified towers countering the entire 50 food army and there you go, talons are gone gone while you get yourself a free expo (and Elf can’t due to raiders).
Just like necromancers, no place in meta.
While I am delighted that heroes like pit lord is no longer a meme, in elf’s case specifically, elf did lose more diversity in its unit choices overall as the game has now become mass hunts vs orc buildings every game as elf struggles to win in direct engagements.

I wish Blizzard would take note of this and balance appropriately. Also, going forward, I wish current pros voice be listened before balancing, not streamers or former pros like Grubby or Tod. It did seem players like Lawliet and Chaemiko were quite frustrated about the balance patch (and even players like Infi/Th000 were direct about how imbalanced some MU were).

Games should be balanced one by one with ± 1 digit percentages. Not 2 or 3 digit percentages. For instance, panda got nerfed 28%. Abomination disease cloud got buffed 100%. You see the issues? The numbers are way too big. And please don’t buff/nerf so many things at once. A buff in one race is an indirect nerf on races that has to face that very unit (and vice versa).
e.g.: Buff on rifles/MK/Water ele dmg while nerfing dryad dispel/bears/panda/dh is a double nerf on NE.

This is all I’ll say. Elf is arguably the worst top scene race currently and I think that also has to do with overnerfing after 1.30 mgs. And that patch was also a headache.
On the bright side, UD owns competitive scene now. Not just Happy but also we getting tier 2 pro scene like Syde, Shiek, Insup, etc. show up due to the many nerfs other races got. UD seems to crush NE (Moon can only compete with 27 more supply of dryads and another gold mine vs 120 and even then, it’s questionable) due to bears becoming worthless and dryads dealing far less damage overall than unholy + statue + coil + fiend piercing. And seems to fare really well vs HU overall if HU can’t go tanks. And only needs to worry break even vs Orc.

4 Likes
2

Raises some good points. Everybody has their biased opinions, but a competent balance team has to be intelligent enough to understand the game in depth and do their best to avoid bias.
Can the blizz team do that? I hope they show me otherwise, but in their latest patches they have shown a complete lack of understanding. Incompetence is when you nerf a skill by 20% mana cost increase (manaburn) then realize it was too much and revert it back.
There are too many examples that are too frustrating to go through. I refunded reforged as a result of all the incompetence.
As a 10+ year wc3 veteran, I pre-ordered as soon as news of reforged came out and am willing to purchase if the balance isn’t garbage. All patches after 1.26 simply aren’t as balanced as 1.26.
I hope the balance team either learns the game or find new competent employees.

2 Likes
3

Night elf heroes seem so weak. There is a reason almost every NE player uses tavern heroes. Their late game units are also pretty bad compared to the other races. There’s nothing that can dish out decent DPS. I barely see any night elf players anymore.

4

Elf is in a really bad place currently. The balance in 1.28 was good, after that it swung too heavy in elf’s favor, then too heavily the other direction.

5

Elf is doing alright, its just Human which is completeley overtuned in multiple aspects.

Mountain giants where OP but they were also bugged to reduce damage further than intended. So what did blizzard do? They not only nerfed MG’s, they also added The Sword upgrade for Knights so they deal even more damage. Totally unnessesary and over the top. Knights are the units with highest armor in the game, you get tons of value out of healing them. They are also as fast as UD army with level 2 unholy aura. And now blizzard gave them huge damage. Knights are insane units right now even though they never had to be.

Rifle buff in itself is huge counter against Nightelf. Same with Priest mana regen buff, which makes Inner fire easier to cast on mortar teams, which also destroy NE units.

Hu expands faster than NE, creeps faster, has better lategame than NE. NE has no answer to HU lategame. This is where blizzard has to make changes. HU has been overrepresented in the last 4 big tournaments. TH000, Infi are expected to do well, but now you even have Sok and Romantic suddenly perform insane. Meanwhile, TH000 has admitted the game isn’t fair when he beat Moon handily in a tournament. Every patch, HU gets stronger. Those were his words.

Its time to stop the bias and look at tournament statistics and deduce balance from there. Not just give every Knight an Excalibur Sword because you felt like it. And not buff Mountain King Thunderclap to insane levels because you felt like it.

We keep seeing the best Orc, UD and Nightelf players perform well but suddenly there is a surge of Human players because of the recent patches. HU vs NE is a cakewalk for Human. HU vs Orc aswell as Orcs have huge trouble adapting to the broken Thunderclap and have a horrible time dealing with Breakers, now that MK pushed BM completely out of the meta.

6

Very good post!
It’s just frustrating how blizzard is handling the balance.

Here some examples what went wrong since 1.28:

  • Before the big overhaul Human had a really strong T2 Naga/Rifle push against NE. Most of the games where won easily by the humans and only due to hard micro the Nightelfs could win those games. But Blizzard buffed the Naga-Speed, buffed Rifler, buffed WEs, nerfed the DH, nerfed Bears.
    After reading the patch notes, it was for me instantly clear that this match up went broke.

  • Before the patch Orcs won near every game vs Talons on the pro scene. But Blizzard nerfed Talons again, buffed the Orc Buildings, buffed the SH (Serpent Wards are currently imba), buffed Headhunters. Consequently Talons are not viable anymore!
    Bears got also nerfed which where even back in the days not viable against Orc.
    Therefore NE is forced to play mass T1, which falls extremely off in the late game.

  • I understand the approach to buff the orc burrows vs a magic damage harassment, but buffing the towers at the same time was over the top!
    Building two towers in the base or expension at those early times is way too strong!

  • I would say mass Gargs was quite balanced back in the days. But since then they nerfed the Panda and buffed the Gargs speed (which now makes Hippos even more useless)
    They also buffed the zigurats to a broken level! As an NE you can’t break a zigurat with an normal army. Therefore the UD expansions got imba!
    (I was playing on the Iron Couch against Syde. The patch was new and i was not aware of the problem. Syde had an expension with 2 towers. I was attacking with a 50 supply army one zigurat for 15-20 seconds. I couldn’t destroy it. Not possible. At that point I lost the game)

  • In near every patch talons got nerfed. Slightly more gold cost here, slightly more production time there and so on. And now compare it to the human casters who are still cheap and can be spamed in seconds.

  • Eventhough i like the approach to make all heros viable, it still went too far.
    Buffing the speed of the most heros made some tactics superior. For instance the Naga-speed. While it had its strenghts, it was also vurnable against a direct Naga attack. The balance was fine. But now the Naga can easily run away against every attack, which makes a push way too strong (UD timing push, HU rifler/Naga).

  • MK clap was overbuffed. Two claps and a whole 50 supply archer army is down. (which destroys an obvious counter against mass rifler instanly)
    Even bears are now useless against clap.

  • Pitlord cleave is broken. Once the Pitlord gets his lvl 3 or 5, the game is near over. The damage output is ridiculous.

  • And now the most crucial issue with the balancing: UNDEADS
    I think the whole balancing after 1.28 started with the HU vs UD match up. At those times the game was stuck in an expansion game with mass towers vs mass destroyers. Therefore blizzard buffed rifles to play against UD. Unfortunately it broke other match ups at this point which started a snowball effect on the whole patching.

The big problem with undeads is, that the DK, fiends, 3 heros tactic is initially way too strong with no weaknesses and able to counter every other tactic. There is a reason why Happy is playing since years quite every game the same against every race and tactic!
The orb of corruption is still too strong!
The DK has either too much mana or his coil cast time is way too short.
Statues are regenerating way too much mana and life.
Balance this issues and undeads will start to diversify their tacics.

Overall I think the current patch is unbalanced than ever before. Most of the games are abuse vs abuse. Too many thinks are way too broken. And watching the path Blizzard took, i have bearly hopes for a better ending… :frowning:

2 Likes
7

Actually elf was never too strong. Orcs needed their time to find the counter against mass T1. Now the orc army is superior.
Even the mass MGs issue wasn’t really broken. It was a lame game; yes. But most of the times the humans won thos games due to the lack of nightelfs damage.

8

Havent read the thread but one thing that is utterly to strong from nightelves is the transition into double or even quad chim roost.

In the last 2-3 years, I have barely seeing it fail on toplevel, it has literally a 90% sucessrate.

9

The solution to buffing NE is not to nerf UD. That kind of logic isn’t only bound to fail, but also misunderstands why UD use one tactic.

UD use one tactic because its the only competitively viable one they have.

So by whining that HU vs UD “broke NE” and suggesting the solution is to nerf UD, you’re essentially willing to sacrifice the entire UD comp scene in order to achieve your goal. “Forcing UD to adapt” isn’t valid until they are given the tools to be able to do so.

Very few UD players wants to mass Fiends + DK + Lich every game. Very few want trash caster units. Very few want nonsense heroes like CL to be trash. But you act like every pro UD player is exploiting something which is overpowered, instead of grasping the reality: they have no other options.

Obviously you’re a hardcore NE player, and carry a degree of resentment for UD because of the Happy vs Moon matches. While I can understand that, I also disagree that there is something fundamentally imbalanced about NE vs UD. The stats speak for themselves.

What is imbalanced is HU. Which is why NE could use a helping hand against specifically HU units, and some blatantly OP stuff like Thunder Clap needs a general nerf.