Huntresses Moon Glaive

Competitive Multiplayer
1

Its been far too long since huntresses have gone from being an unstoppable tide of death they were in RoC, into a highly situational melee glass cannon unit they are today. Both are fundamentally flawed in their utility and balance. So I’m wondering if anyone else feels that the huntresses never had a chance to be what they were truly meant to be - a solid tier 1 meat shield, like a grunt. No more, no less. If you compare rifleman and crypt fiend, both are very similar in how they are used, how fast they kill, and how fast they get killed. Why then is there such a great difference between a huntress and grunt in just about every area that you look at? No other tier 1 units come even close in their differences as huntress and grunt do. Footmen are just tankier and slower moving ghouls, head hunters are archers with a shorter range and a higher damage, and crypt fiends are basically riflemen with ensnare. But grunts and huntress are anything but similar. Grunts don’t fold like paper to piercing damage, but they don’t have that ridiculous splash damage that huntresses do. And I definitely prefer grunts, because being unarmored melee just… defeats the whole point of being a melee unit in the first place. No other melee unit is unarmored. It just doesn’t make any sense to be one. If you are a ragdoll, your place is at the back, not at the front, where the likes of Knights run the show!

What if, just as a theory, huntresses were to have their starting moon glaive attack removed completely, and become a pure single target unit, exactly like a grunt is? Because even before the tier 3 Improved Moon Glaive research, huntresses moon glaive has a bouncing attack, that hits more than 1 target. The equivalent would be a grunt with a starting 10% cleave. Needless to elaborate how ridiculously overpowered that would be, and being imo already the best tier 1 unit, grunts would become the equivalent of RoC huntresses, and would surely get nerfed into oblivion, if not made unarmored, then something equivalently bad, but their ability to wtfpwn everything on sight in an open field would be very very quickly quashed.

Fortunately that’s not going to happen, and grunts would never experience what huntresses did, a brief moment of blazing glory in RoC, and a 20 years payback for it, that has made up for their 2002-2003 rampage twentyfold. Regardless of that, I think it has been enough penitence, and now huntresses may return to their original durability state that was missing for these 20 years. However by now having everyone realised why they have been leonidas’ed into unarmored 20 years ago, this is not another “jerst gib em heeavy armorz and call it balans!” thread. I repeat, I do realise why huntresses have been unarmored for so long, and anyone with a functioning brain knows this best kept secret too. Splash Moon Glaive Attack was about 90% accountable for their nerf. And I’m willing to trade it for heavy armor. I’m sure a lot of you would secretly love it too, because at the moment, huntresses are unusable about 80% of the time, and are just walking experience points for your opponent. Archers are clearly the true mvps of NE from TFT onwards, but huntresses deserve some love too. Giving huntresses Elune’s Grace is of course out of question, as that would make them even more OP than they were in RoC, but giving them heavy armor for balance reasons while taking away that ridiculous cleave that nobody else, save for tier 3 units tauren, have, is, I think, a very desirable and long overdue change we all wanted. And for those of you, who will say “over my dead body will you get rid of that splash damage”, you can relax, as you will still have that tier 3 research of Improved Moon Glaive, that will function exactly the way it currently does, but in return it will make the huntresses unarmored again! I’m sure this is possible to script, we already have an ability that changes armor type: orc’s reinforced defenses, so it should be fairly easy to develop from a technical point of view, in world editor it is Data - Effect: Defense Type Change. But I think no one in their right mind would want to give up heavy armor for unarmored as a melee unit! But you should be able to if you really want to, just not at the tier 1 when NE are sorely lacking a decent meat shield unit, that once used to be huntress, but now its nothing… And it should be something!

Tl;dr:

Decrease the total number of targets that initial Moon Glaive strikes per hit from 2 to 1. Make huntress starting Moon Glaive attack as 1 swing - 1 hit on 1 target, just like a grunt does. In return, grant huntresses Heavy armor. Basically turn them into grunts (albeit less meatier and faster moving, but still a meatshield, not a paper thin ragdoll, that dies to a single group volley from a pack of riflemen!)

Improved Moon Glaive research at tier 3 will increase the number of targets by 1, just like it does now, and the total number of targets stricken will be decreased from 3 down to 2, which will be compensated by Heavy armor

Technical details on how to achieve the above:

war3x.mpq > Units > UnitBalance.slk > defType > change from 'none' to 'large' for a 'huntress'

war3x.mpq > Units > UnitWeapons.slk > targCount1 > change from '2' to '1' for a 'huntress'
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2

My response, read below:

(http://classic.battle.net/war3/nightelf/units/huntress.shtml)

"Although the Huntress has the unarmored armor type, she does in fact have armor. That armor type is used for balance reasons.

Since she is a ranged unit (although with a very small range), you can use the same control techniques you use with other longer ranged units. Hit and run! Use focused fire!

The Huntress throws her Glaive so that it bounces off of her target and deals extra damage on a second target if one is close by."

How did you thought to compare with grunts? Oh my _ God!

3

Huntresses are a total dumpster tier and a giant feed to anyone with a half functioning brain rn. And for the record, they WERE grunts, back in 2002. What a pity a really conservative (old school) like you arrived a year too late to witness what they were capable of back then. I, however, have been around back then, and I can confidently attest ROC huntresses were the biggest imba in the history of warcraft 3. Nothing came even close to that level of pwnage, not even 900 dmg unstable concoction batriders in 1.07. And it absolutely was because of the moon glaive. Want to get an idea how good it was? Open a test map in world editor and give grunts pulverize. 1v1 someone, mass grunts and attack move into their base. See the results. And now make them unarmored. Again see the results. Notice any difference?

Starting from 2003 though, you can run all you like, you will never outrun bullets. Basically this alone just negates your entire point

Anyone with an MMR above Insane AI will focus fire these fluffy experience points with superior range, and count levels, while your kinhating behind will not. I can’t believe this even needs to be spelled out loud. When was the last time you played 1v1 or 2v2, and not the 4v4 campaign?

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4

Huntress has bird ability and glaive so they must be less in other aspects than grunts.
But why compare those ?
is it like you compare wyrms with chims. Just because both have wings is Not a fair comparison!

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Grunt has pillage and berserk strength so they must be less in other aspects than huntresses then.
And I’m comparing huntress with grunt because huntress is supposed to be exactly the grunt’s vis-a-vis, and in fact they were back in RoC, as mentioned multiple times above. Unfortunately this has stopped, and chiefly because of how broke the glaive attack is. I’m 95% sure it was the glaive attack behind those “balance reasons” you referred to in your post, which saw the huntress becoming unarmored to make up for their crazy damage caused by glaive. However by doing so, it has made them way too squishy to be on the front lines, because unarmored gets 150% from piercing damage, while heavy gets a normal 100%, and now huntresses are pretty much unusable against just about anything except an AI, unless you feel like identifying as a shooting range target during the match up

http://classic.battle.net/war3/basics/armorandweapontypes.shtml

so therefore I’d love to trade that ridiculous glaive for some meatshield capability of Heavy armor, because at the moment night elf has no meaningful one until T2, while everyone else has it at T1. And if you’re one of those who would rather eat your sentinel scout than to give up glaive attack, I have explicitly left a clause to cover that,

so I’m genuinely confused, why are you so resistant towards a positive and a long overdue change of making huntresses actually survive a little longer than 2 seconds on the front lines?

And I’m glad you brought the chims vs wyrms thing up. Wyrms and chims are loosely comparable indeed, but definitely not because they both have wings. I’m not comparing wyrm with a faerie dragon for example, as they couldn’t be more different in the food limit they take, in their techtree requirements, in their damage type, their magic immunity status, and just about everything else in their utility in general. Chims and wyrms on the other hand are definitely comparable to some extent. They are both slow and big heavy hitters with magic damage that have siege utilities, albeit chimaera is way better suited for that because of the siege damage, but wyrm can hit air. Still they are definitely more comparable in some aspects, as opposed to comparing say chimaera and gyrocopter. Both of them can fly too, but no one in their right mind would compare those two seriously. Either way, the fine detail differences understandably get bigger and bigger as tier teching progresses for all of the factions, and even Warcraft II had differences in caster abilities once a certain tech advancement was reached, otherwise it would have been like checkers the entire game. Warcraft III has moved on significantly from the checkers based approach of Warcraft II, where all the counterpart units had identical stats for the entire game, like ogre:paladin, ranger:berserker and so forth, but during the early game, even in Warcraft III, there should never had been such a drastic differences in gameplay style like an unarmored melee, knowing that unarmored units just get honeycombed by anything with a pierce damage in 2 seconds, which all 4 factions have at the start of game. Alternatively we could make a grunt unarmored, just try it for one patch and see how it plays out. Would we be happy with that?

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Mainly I am happy with War3 balance.
But yes elf little weak in early game - that is a fact, and UD way too strong in early game.
Also at end game UD is too strong.
But giving armor to hunt will not solve it. Better make archer stronger comparable with rifle or HH.

7

This alone says everything anyone needs to know about you. What a mime.

Have you ever got gruntrushed by a decent orc from two barracks? I both have been, and have done the rush, and the only way UD could remotely hope to beat that, is defend at the base with fiends and outtech into destroyers, while OR zooms around at hypersonic speed and chomps up any stray trash in their way. At tier 1 though, if you try to mess around with mass grunts in the open field, you’re toast. Grunts are not an utter trash like huntresses, they’re quite the opposite, and will stomp you into oblivion if you try to take them head on.

This is why over the past twenty years before happy’s time and crypt lord’s beetles 1.32.6 update, which was 6181 days too late, undead consistently had the lowest representation at the top of the tourneys’ listings out of all four. But who cares about tournaments, the real mccoys only play 4x4!

What are you intoxicated with? Archers are great to godly in just about any hands that don’t grow out of a booty. A fully upgraded archer kills berserker 1vs1, and a fully upgraded one too! Berserker is a tier 3 unit. If this is not definition of an S tier for you, then you’re either a confirmed troll, or a clinical fool. Archers need nerfs instead of buffs, because a certain combos of heroes like kotg, beastmaster or FL whose summons remove reliance on a dumpster fire that huntresses are, make elf little nightmare to deal with! And comparing rifleman with an archer 1v1 is pointless, because that’s a different ballpark. Rifleman costs ~42% more to make, and takes 3 food limit, they’re bound to be stronger than archers. But if you compare 2 riflemen vs 3 archers, which are nearly the same in cost and food limit, archers win every single time. Same with fiends, although it is not as pronounced, as UD can burrow fiends, in which case NE will have to make a walking dummy with a single use immovable owl, the usefulness of which ends after the owl is placed, and potentially even decreases, as if it remains on the battlefield, it will swiftly get reborn as a couple of skellies after a couple of ffs (stands for focusfires for those with an itchy report button) from fiends, unless you have potm first of course, but who would even consider that? So your entire post just reeks of incompetence, and a failure the admit the obvious, that the only downside of archers not being able to take on a grunt in an open field, (LOL! who the hell can at T1?!) is the lack of a proper meatshield, and literally the only candidate for that, without being forced to choose a hero with summons, is a huntress

8

Having done more testing, using the modified elf.AI script that masses huntresses:

https://pastebin.com/EA6n8LVk

I would like to re-iterate that it is not the Improved Glaive research available at Tier 3 that is the problem, but the initial bouncing attack, innate to the huntress and available at Tier 1 that is

If we change:

war3x.mpq > Units > UnitBalance.slk > defType > from 'none' to 'large' for a 'huntress'

and

war3x.mpq > Units > UnitWeapons.slk > targCount1 > change from '2' to '1' for a 'huntress'

Then the in-built bouncing attack of the huntress available at tier 1 is removed, and they become exactly what I think they should have been all along for the past 20 years: a tanky unit, capable of protecting the squishy archers, who will live long enough to have a meaningful impact on battlefield and chance to turn the tide to night elf player favor.

This would be very similar at how grunts can defend troll berserks long enough for berserks to annihilate the enemy front lines, and then finish off whatever is remaining at opponents rear, whether its casters, siege units, or any combination there may be.

However, the Improved Glaive attack, that hits 3 targets, can in my opinion be retained as it currently is afterall, and the huntresses may not even need to change their Heavy armor back to Unarmored once the Improved Glaive attack is researched. From a technical side, the Improved Glaive upgrade may simply change the ‘missile’ value to ‘mbounce’, or whatever the mechanism is used for such changes. I assume that’s what orc’s ‘Reinforced Defenses’ do, except instead of ‘Defense Type Change’ that updates a defType from ‘large’ to ‘fort’ for the OrcBurrow and WatchTower, in huntresses case, it will be a weapTp1 change from ‘missile’ to ‘mbounce’ once the Improved Glaive’s ‘Attack Target Count Bonus’ effect is applied. And having only started playing in 2004, I still realised that the biggest issue of RoC huntresses overpowerness was around Tier 1 and Tier 2, when they did not have their Improved Glaive upgrade, but their innate bouncing attack coupled with proper armor has made it impossible to take on them in the open, and even if one or both parties reached a Tier 3 stage, the Improved Glaive made little difference, as by then, the night elf’s opponent situation was already so dire, that the Improved Glaive was just the icing on the cake, but by no means a cake itself, as the cake itself was the initial bouncing attack available to huntresses at Tier 1. Besides, at Tier 3 everyone has a far better melee alternative to mass huntresses, even if they have Improved Glaive, and retain their Heavy armor. Knights are far superior tanks, DotC are far superior damage dealers, and Tauren are superior at both. It is true that night elf will get their power spike earlier via the simple Improved Glaive research, while a human player for example, may need to make 2 or 3 knights to start turning the tables, but so are heaps of other spikes have different specific timings as well, that do not align with each other, and I’m sure once human has around 3 or 4 knights, they will be able to easily break through any number of huntresses and have the upper hand in the end.

Overall though, the changes specified above make it much more balanced, and flatten the difficulty curve required to a both night elf player using huntresses, and their opponent. Here are my testing results so far:

  • My mass grunts vs mass huntresses with initial bouncing attack:

Haven’t noticed any difference whether huntresses were unarmored, or had a heavy armor. Both armor types take a standard 100% damage from normal attacks, and I had a pretty tough time trying to beat them, losing more than half of my force before finally having an upper hand. Of course in real game I would immediately start using headhunters as soon as I saw more than one huntress, and would have defeated unarmored huntresses easily, while archers would not have been able to bring my grunts down in time before they would fall shortly after huntresses, but purely grunts vs huntresses, armor types change made no difference whatsoever.

  • My mass grunts vs mass huntresses without initial bouncing attack:

Definitely an easier match up than the previous one. I only lost a handful of grunts before being able to beat huntresses back into their base and then subsequently destroyed the opponents main building. It did take some time though, and I do repeat that night elf was not using archers at all, it was just purely tanks vs tanks contest. In real game, night elf player would of course have used archers in addition to huntresses, and I’m not sure I would have been able to win if I solely used grunts at all, but then again I would be using headhunters as well, and then my win would be more than likely.

  • My mass fiends or mass riflemen vs mass huntress with initial bouncing attack and heavy armor:

Oh dear. I did not win once. I was losing more of my units than my opponent did, whenever I tried to engage them, even during daytime (!), and after a few attempts, I just gave up. If this is what night elf’s opponents experienced back in RoC, then I can only give my condolences to all the fallen in the most unfair setup I’ve pretty much ever seen. If something like this has ever happened, then for sure it should never happen again, because it is next to impossible to beat, unless there is a vast player skill difference, and even then it would be a very difficult and a long battle.

  • My mass fiends or mass riflemen vs mass huntress without initial bouncing attack and heavy armor:

Having lost a few times with the previous setup, I was a little demoralised, and played cautiously, still a bit shell shocked from an unstoppable tide of death from previous few games, but when I engaged this time, surprisingly it was a very pleasant and fun experience. Huntresses certainly no longer were an unstoppable force, chasing me into my base and nearly destroying me there, but they haven’t dropped like kitty cats from a mere stare either. It was somewhat easier to defeat them than using grunts against bouncing attack huntresses, but it was a bit more difficult to defeat them than using grunts against huntresses without one. I still lost a handful of riflemen, and it took longer to win than using grunts, but I did have a ton of joy during that match up. My relatively few unit losses may be also explained that I waited until I got to Tier 2 and researched Long Rifles before attacking during daytime, and if I attacked earlier, I may have had a harder time winning, comparable to the grunts vs bouncing attack huntresses, but it certainly would have not been impossible unlike with the previous setup. More testing is needed, probably using HH and archers, and it was very enjoyable the entire time I did it

  • My mass fiends or mass riflemen vs mass unarmored huntress with initial bouncing attack:

No contest. I didn’t even have to focus fire much, they dropped like kitty cats from riflemen auto attacks, even at night. As mass fiends, I beat them in 12 minutes, while as mass riflemen in 16. Their bouncing attack made no difference as two volleys from a pack of my ranged units just dropped them for good. I haven’t lost a single unit and got so bored I even stopped using my hero to fight the units, only used it to fight enemy hero, but I still won without retreating to base once. I think this was the easiest game I have ever had, but it was not fun at all because how easy it was to beat mass unarmored huntresses using mass units with a piercing damage. In fact, now I think that huntresses are the only Tier 1 unit, that all 4 factions have a hard counter for at the start of the game (!), which is basically mass ranged units. I haven’t checked whether using smaller ranged units like archers or berserks had the same outcome, but something tells me I can beat mass huntresses even using headhunters without berserk upgrade. This is both funny and sad, and should have definitely not gone on for so long as it did, but its never to late to realise this, and actually make a positive balance change once in a while, even if it may not undo the past 20 years of misery due to not having a proper tank as a night elf, but its better late than never, and I believe now is the good time to make this change for the better, even if it is just for one patch, which can always be reverted if not accepted, but something tells me it will be.

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Watch your language @Portemian! What you do i personal attack, I am not “intoxicated” “mime” or what u wrote noob r kid! I reported you!

And a hunt : small elf riding a panther is not a tanky unit, for that you got MG.
Good luck tryin to changing hunts but blizzard will never do that!

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Again, please read what I wrote earlier

Mountain Giants are not available until T2, and even at T2 they’re not that good as a tank, as their hardened skin upgrade is not available until T3. If you only use huntresses, you will not survive that long against a piercing onslaught of mass fiends without using archers at all. At least I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried, but I’d be happy for you to prove me wrong

(Also night elves are not small, they’re generally around 7 feet tall, which is taller than an average human)

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Edit: for some reason posts here get deleted randomly, so the responses to them no longer apply

14

Whatever, I don’t even care enough anymore. They should have never killed classic warcraft 3 in the first place, as even though huntresses were an utter trash throughout its entire time, a myriad of other nice things were able to offset it far better than even if they do finally decide to change a huntress into a viable unit in the next patch, which I highly doubt they would, knowing that certain lingering retardants will resist anything and everything just for the sake of it.

Back to your topic though, the technical changes you’ve listed sound pretty complex, especially changing weapon types from bounce to single target. I’m sure its all technically possible, but if you really want to get any meaningful change through, just start with requesting a Defend! ability for a huntress. Its a screaming missing link, that would decrease piercing damage by 50% and completely offset the unarmored piercing damage bonus from 150% to 100%, but it won’t make them overpowered against mass ranged like Elune Grace would, as Defend! comes with a huge 30% movement speed reduction, down from 350 to 245, and it has to be micromanaged, by turning it on and off, which is also a balance factor, while Elune Grace is always active, and its magic resistance bonus would make huntresses even more OP than in RoC, because at least now I can stormbolt > focusfire them into the dust with a giggle one by one, while magic resistance from Elune Grace would make it problematic, if not outright improbable.

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Wow that’s actually a pretty good idea. Why haven’t I think of that?

I mean huntresses do have these big huge shields they carry around with them everywhere, but they never seem to be using these shields at all. Maybe its about time they did? How are they even unarmored, when this shield looks so massive, a whole grunt could hide behind it? I will need to do some testing, to see how it holds together from a balance perspective, but looking at the defend ability in world editor, this may be exactly what is needed without introducing any complexities. And since spellbreakers also carry those humongous car doors around, maybe they could use a defend ability too?

16

Hard no to a Defend! ability on a spellbreaker regardless their shield size. Spellbreakers are magic immune, remember? The only counters to them are either tier 3 melee units like aboms, or hard hitting ranged ones with piercing damage to a lesser extent. With Defend! added to a spellbreaker, the only counter left will be a melee, because any armor except for light one and Defend! together will make its wielder nigh impenetrable to piercing damage, and if you manage to get through knights, spellbreakers with Defend! will be a second wall that you won’t be able to get through. Its like trying to beat mass footmen using only archers, good luck with that. So definitely no to spellbreakers with Defend!, unless of course they have their armor changed to unarmored! Lol, then that would work. Even from a visual point of view, their armor seems largely the same as the huntress’, the faceguard, the overalls, etc, yet one unit is unarmored, and the other unit is, because “Balance Reasons”. But cosmetics aside, purely from a balance perspective, the huntress would upscale from a current utter trash to a mediocre unit at best if granted a Defend! ability even if she remains unarmored, while spellbreaker with Defend! would become op as hell unless he is made so.

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I guess you’re right about defend being a bit too much for spellbreakers. I’m not sure if they even have enough space in their ability bar for it, as it already looks pretty packed there haha. One thing though, is that spellbreakers do get owned hard by normal damage, even grunts will easily kill them, let alone tier 3 units like knights with sundering blades. But if you don’t have enough units with normal damage, spellbreakers will definitely pose a big problem indeed, as you can’t just AoE them down, or use something like chims or gryphons to deal with them like you can with huntresses even if they have defend ability, so yea it kinda evens it out

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Take a look. Of course you must know how to use Hunts … maybe you learn how to micro them out when they almost die.
Follow Grubby!

https://   www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZygsLFS_X8

Also others uploaded similar videos, just search “Mass Hunts”.

19

That’s grubby my dude. He can probably beat you and me using mass wisps. Also he was using protectors that have piercing damage, so its already not just “mass hunts”, and also that orc was not very good. I haven’t seen a single headhunter, which are a pure counter to huntresses due to their piercing damage, but again, its grubby, and that orc probably didn’t even have a chance to make any, because he had to deal with a lot of other things that grubby threw at him.

My point still stands. If an average night elf tries to beat an average orc using only mass hunts, 8 times out of 10 they’re likely to fail. I can’t even bother trying, because I know this for a fact, due to how easy it was for me to beat mass hunts using riflemen or fiends. Haven’t lost a single unit and the game ended before I even got to tier 3. And I have done some testing of huntresses with defend yesterday, and results look quite impressive. I was able to beat human who only used riflemen with some defend micro. Before defend on hunts though, I lost half of my force just by the time I pushed human into their base, and then I didn’t have enough units to keep the momentum going and fell back. This was not the case when I used mass riflemen against huntresses with no defend, I just steamrolled them without falling back once. Do you want to try it out together to see for yourself?

20

Average Elf, can have with almost no skills a strong DH level 3 pretty fast, while average orc cannot develop so fast… Also average Elf, AoW creep gold mine so has 2 mines when orc did not even have 3 grunts to creep confortably. Plus auto heal - moon wells sure help noobs a lot.
Plus I told hunts have other abilities, eg. vision and bounce for harass peasants.Just use them wisely.

21

You definitely haven’t seen what a good blademaster with mirror image and headhunters with a second SH is capable of. AoW mine creeping is good, but you still have to grow tree of life after that, which all takes time, and if you are getting pressed hard by enemy ranged from 5 minute mark onwards while only having huntresses, you’re going to have a very hard time without defend ability added to huntresses. Sure you may somehow survive at the base until morning, but moon wells cannot walk, and you won’t be harassing any peasants, because even arcane tower will make a quick work of one huntress, and if its the one with a piercing damage, it can deal with multiple. Vision bonus is useless during the day, and that’s when you will be attacked the most, and you won’t survive until the next night with the setup you’re suggesting. Again I’m happy to test this out to see if I’m wrong, but if you keep evading my invites, then we may just have to agree to disagree and leave it at that.