Ghoul frenzy rework

First of all, i’m not ne main, basically i play everything and DON’T want anyone be superior to other race. Yet, last nerf of GF affect every matchup for undead BUT elves, the ones who suffer from it the most.
My suggestion have 3 simple steps.

  1. Nerf it from 35 attack speed and 60 move speed to 20% attack speed and 30 move speed.
  2. make it 100\100 cost instead of 100\150
  3. BUT make it affect abominations too.
    Thats will make ud push less abusable against ne, and makes aboms actually usable unit in late game.
    Feel free to tell how i’m wrong and have a nice day =3

Sorry for my opinion on the values shall not be given 'cause I’m not a professional, however speed bonus is not recommended to be too low as it affects logging efficiency. And, if Ghoul Frenzy is going to be nerfed, consider making it effective for Cannibalize as well as a compensation.

I have the same view, but the bonus rate can be different from Ghoul’s.

I’m suggest it because basically ud have no usable t3 units but destros and GH timings are toxic for the game. So ud is race who have literally 1-2 minutes after t3 finished to win the game and there is the problem - or they become op or they become cr@p depends of orb and GF balancing. But if aboms get reasonable nerfed GF ud will get weaker powerspike yet stronger late game and everybody will be happy (le kek).

WarCraft III upgrades don’t have that kind of modularity. You can set up to 4 effects, and they will all work the same way on every unit that receives the upgrade. There are workarounds involving abilities, but those might have side-effects as well.

I made it available with Custom Upgrade, Abilities, and etc (independently, and I didn’t use any trigger) . I’m just a World Editor amateur and a player, for the officials, who will only be more capable overall than I am, and there will only be much less editorial constraints, if they are intend to adopt that, it would be even less of an issue for them (and there’s a ready-made analogous example: Cannibalize). Anyway, thanks for communicating.

Let me guess:
You gave Abominations an attack speed ability to make up the difference, and that ability requires the upgrade.

The potential problem I expect with that method is that it makes abilities such as Unholy Frenzy, Endurance Aura, and Bloodlust a bit worse. This is because attack speed abilities stack additively rather than multiplicatively (adding up the percentage bonuses before applying them to the attack cooldown).

If the upgrade bonuses are exempt from that system (multiplicative rather than additive), then a unit that gets its attack speed bonus from an upgrade will have higher DPS than a unit that gets its attack speed bonus from an ability after other attack-speed boosting abilities are applied.

1 Like

Yes I used one of them, but that’s not important, what matters is that your reply touched some points: I did unaware about the effects of the stacking, and there are other side-effects besides those you mentioned: e.g. if the Customs based on Endurance Aura then Custom Ghoul Frenzy-ed units won’t benefit from the real Endurance Aura & Ancient Janggo of Endurance & so on (and there is always a tiny icon in “STATUS” that doesn’t look like it can be easily removed). So I switched to a different approach which based on Berserker Upgrade, this should expectedly reduce the effects of stacking (though it most probably still imperfect 'cause the moment of switching units may interrupt something); the officials should have a better implementation when they’re far more capable and with a less restrictive environment. Thanks for your advanced & illuminating reply, have a wonderful one.

1 Like

A word of advice: You can use one of the item-based abilities, like the attack speed ability from gloves of haste, as your base instead of an aura. You would have to convert the custom ability from an item ability into a unit ability, but that is just a matter of unchecking a flag.

That said, there are two potential problems with this method:

  • You still have the “additive stacking” issue, assuming that upgrades are not also normally affected by this issue.
  • Sometimes those item abilities don’t respect upgrade requirements (even with the flag checked), so you will have to perform a test to verify that the upgrade requirement is actually working. If the upgrade requirement doesn’t work, then the workaround is to give your ability two levels. Level 1 should do nothing (zero out the bonus), and level 2 will have your bonus. From here, you add an effect to the upgrade (Ghoul Frenzy in this case) that increases the level of your ability by 1. This effect will only apply to units that actually have your ability, so it is a good way to make a single upgrade effect units differently. I think the item damage & item armor abilities in particular may have this problem.

Yes, it should fix that particular problem.

Fair warning, you will probably run into problems with this if you ever play that against the built-in Undead AI.

The AI script relies on some implicit conversions in common.ai to combine units like Militia & Peasants, Headhunters & Berserkers, Druids, Spirit Walkers, Siege Engines, Demon Hunters, or any other existing that have the ability to morph or upgrade for the purpose of “counting” how many of each unit type the AI has built. This conversion won’t work for new units.

Getting around this issue requires using your own custom AI scripts; however, Blizzard could easily get around it by updating a few functions within the common.ai scripts.

1 Like

Sorry for the late reply due to personal business.

While I said “I’m a World Editor amateur”, yet I still flattered/overrated myself: nowadays the extent of my involvement in customizing maps is basically just editing some slightly-customed Altered Melee maps – usually it’s more about removing customization further (I usually playing Classic Melee), tweaking some customization, or fixing bugs (self-use only, no re-publishing or sharing). Only in the very early days I did make some custom units with some custom abilities based on Editor-established “materials”. I was trying to achieve this “Ghoul Frenzy affect both Ghoul and Abomination” thing more as a verification and self-test.

As some “extras” I tried Customs based on Berseker (Ability), Elune’s Grace and Defend (included Item version), but none of them works proper. I surmise the crux is this “Order String” thing.
Moreover I discovered the “Attack Speed Factor” & “Movement Speed Factor” of Elune’s Grace and Defend are actually “Attack Speed Reduction Factor” & “Movement Speed Reduction Factor” and cannot be set to negative numbers, plus I found a Hive user posted on 2021.1.30 says “the latest version of warcraft 3, which allows you to stack buffs as long as the buff name is not the same” – it seems “Custom Ghoul Frenzy based on Endurance Aura or such” can still benefit from their originator, so I gave those “extras” up. I also tried base on Slow Aura of Tornado and it works, however somehow the Ghoul Frenzy icon doesn’t display in unit panel with this ability.

Well, I think I’ll end the “experiment” on this, since as far as the results go if the officials want to implement this (conscientiously) it’s more probably won’t be a problem. However that doesn’t mean I’m taking your appreciated and informative reply/suggestion lightly – it’s good to know/learn more.

1 Like