Let’s Talk About Balance

General Discussion
1

I am an Orc player, ~1700 MMR on W3C, I have been playing from time to time for 20 years.

Usually, everyone who writes about balance asks to buff their own race, but this will be an exception.

Orc vs. Orc has become a very interesting and pleasant matchup (sarcasm): whoever reaches Tauren with upgrades faster wins. Any other strategies in this matchup have disappeared. Personally, I feel sick when I get Orc vs. Orc.

Night Elves, against any strategy and any race, play one and the same strategy. Other races have to play depending on the circumstances, using different units, while Night Elves use two types of units and two heroes.

This season I have played 87 games:

  • 16 Humans
  • 24 Orcs
  • 29 Night Elves
  • 8 Undead

I have a question, Blizzard: what happened, where did the Undead and Human players go? And who did this? Maybe something is wrong, or are you fine with it?

Summary:

  • Orc vs. Orc: everyone constantly rushes Tauren; other strategies have disappeared. Orc against other races is fine; it is possible to play in different ways.
  • Night Elves: one strategy against everyone, including mirror.
  • Humans: the remaining Humans endure everything; Humans can be punished with whatever you want.
  • Undead: they are not there.

By feeling, this is simply the worst balance in all 20+ years of the game’s existence.

Thank you, Blizzard, you did well.

P.S. I mean that, seeing four races in the game and 10+ units for each race, I assume that I will be playing against four races and against several different strategies from those races that utilize all of these units.
But in reality, I end up playing either against Tauren or against Bears and Dryads

5 Likes
2

BLZ did well, just keep make this game fast dead, we can start a new one. :rofl:

4

Same feeling. The NE is so no-brainer. DH + bears + dryads in every single game! And most orc use the taurens after the new patch (previous it was FS + hh, also a bit no-brainer)

HU and UD disappear.

You bilzzard developers really need to think how to make the micro requirement/strength equal for all the races.

The micro requirement of NE is the lowest, as they have the Moonwell to heal, so you should really make their unit more fragile or expensive.

Then it is for the Orc, as they have the troll of healing and their units have more HP. So you should make them expensive or take longer to train or slow.

Then it is the UD. The highest requirement of micro is HU to expand. So you should think how to make their units cheap or faster to train.

While in the last patches, you keep buffing NE/Orc units, and nerfing the HU units, which make the balance completely broken.

2 Likes
5

From what you wrote, it sounds like either outdated opinions or a misunderstanding of the current meta. I double-checked and your post is from just 2 days ago, which makes it even more surprising. Maybe the level of play you’re referring to is relatively low, because Tauren rush is actually considered one of the weaker Orc strategies right now - there are many stronger and more reliable options.

Again, this makes me wonder if you’ve been playing recently or if this is based on how the game was 10–15 years ago. As a Human player myself, I can say that their defensive capabilities are quite strong in the current state of the game.

I don’t think anything is “completely broken.” The current balance is actually one of the best we’ve had in a long time. If UD needs anything, it’s a small, carefully considered adjustment - perhaps reworking abilities (like Disease Cloud) rather than handing out direct buffs.

Overall, the latest patch is widely considered one of the better ones, with noticeable improvements to balance across the board.

6

He has 1700 MMR on W3C. Why you doubt he is not a frequent player? What is your MMR?

How do you explain the statistics after the recent patches? The ratio of UD and HU is indeed going down.

1 Like
7

Your MMR has no bearing on whether your claim about balance is accurate. Asking for mine is unnecessary and not relevant to the discussion.

The current patch is widely regarded as GOOD BALANCE, and while certain NE strategies are popular, that doesn’t mean other races are “disappearing.”
Counters exist for every matchup, and skills still matters.

8

Let’s Talk About Balance

let’s not and say we did?

ALL mirror matches are “whoever does something faster/better wins.” If it’s not tauren it’s whatever other unit turns out to be meta, and the same goes for all the other races.

Mirror matches are mirror matches: You’re both playing the same race with the same units and upgrades, so balance isn’t even a factor. Trying to talk balance specifically in mirror matches is just silly.

And seriously, stop playing the MMR card like it means something. You don’t have to be good at the game yourself to have the knowledge and understanding of how it works. There are many ways to still be bad (i.e. mehcanical skill / physical dexterity / alertness etc) even when you have good game knowledge and have a deep understanding of stats and unit interactions.

9

If you don’t fantasize but instead look at replays orc/orc— in all leagues, at all skill levels, including the top level — the main strategy will be Tauren. Sometimes Hitman tries other strategies; you can check them, they are marked in red in his statistics.

“The current patch is widely regarded as GOOD BALANCE” (c). The Elf Discord is not “widely.”

The balance is completely broken, and the proof is that players are abandoning their race. What has to happen for a player to abandon their main race? This has never happened before

2 Likes
10

Again, we’re talking about mirror matches here. It’s not the only workable strategy but of course players are all going to gravitate twoards the same strategy and it’s just whoever does it better/faster. This is perfect balance. Same race vs Same Race is always 100% balanced because both sides are identical. The only issue here is you don’t like the prevailing strategy.

But the reality is you have options. If you know they’re going to focus on Tauren then you can just go air because tauren can’t attack air, and that will force them to include other units in their build.

This isn’t rocket science man, and it’s pretty easy to see what the solution is. If you want to talk about balance you need to talk about different race matchups- mirror matches are inherently already balanced.

If both sides are using the same strategy with the same race, whoever executes it better will win. This is the very definition of perfect balance and isn’t a bad thing. What you’re complaining about isn’t even a balance issue, it’s just what unit combo you think should be the best option. You’re saying the prevailing strategy is to tech to tauren- but tauren have a pretty glaring weakness in lack of ability to attack air, so why can’t you just anticipate this and counter with air?

11

From where are you getting your input data?
Which league or level of play are you referring to?

Orc has multiple viable options: mass Wyverns, early aggression with Headhunters, Raider-based play, etc. If you try to rush Tauren blindly, you’ll often be dead long before reaching that stage.

12

The specifics of mirror matchups are understandable. But the issue here is that Orc has no air unit with magic damage, and Orc vs. Orc is not played with air units at all. That leaves ground units. Previously, Tauren could be eaten by Kodo Beasts; now, because of Resistant Skin, that is no longer possible. And Tauren are the strongest ground unit in the game.

As a result, it’s simply not worthwhile to even try using other units in mirror. Because 40 supply (1–2 Tauren) can easily hold off a Tier 2 push with 50 supply.

So the previous matchup — where Grunts, Raiders, Kodo Beasts, and Spirit Walkers were used — where you had to throw nets, devour units, dispel, use Spirit Link, move units so they wouldn’t get eaten, pull back injured ones, and so on — a micro-intensive and interesting matchup — has turned into a matchup where only Tauren and Spirit Walkers are used.

Tauren fight on their own, and Spirit Walkers resurrect new ones with a single button. You don’t even need to pull Tauren back — it’s more efficient to just revive them.

It seems to me that you are both language AI models. Because you’re both suggesting building wyverns in an orc/orc match

From the balance suggestions, I would highlight the following:

For Orc:
Remove Resistant Skin from Tauren.

For Human:
There seems to be a lumber issue. Make it so that by default 10 hits give 12 lumber, and rework the Lumber Mill upgrade so that the number of hits does not increase.
First upgrade: 10 hits = 20 lumber.
Second upgrade: 10 hits = 30 lumber.

For Night Elves:
Increase mana regeneration in Moon Wells, and significantly reduce the strength of Rejuvenation — either in the amount of health restored and/or in the speed of restoration.

For Undead:
I don’t have any ideas

1 Like
13

To be blunt, eating a 4+ food unit with a 4-food unit is an overpowered mechanic. That needed a change.

I am not sure if that is necessary either.

14

It doesn’t have to be magic damage. Tauren can’t attack air units so regardless of speed, the air units will win unless the other side also has sufficient anti-air alongside them. You say it “isn’t played with air at all.” Well, it sounds like you need to change that, because there’s no reason it shouldn’t win vs Tauren unless the other side actually prepares for that by including air or trolls. But your phrasing makes it sound that this is so ingrained in the mirror meta that people aren’t using units that would protect their army from this kind of counter strategy.

2 Likes
15

The problem with Undead, is that DR is overtuned.

Resulting in it being near impossible for a UD player to survive a NE player(DR first) for more than a few minutes.

16

That’s fine!!!

Kodo is a large unit, just like Tauren - and you should not be able to eat everything. Otherwise, I could just mass 20 Kodos and devour an entire army for an instant win.

On the other hand, reviving Tauren actually takes effort: you need a lot of mana, proper positioning and syncing everything correctly. It’s not just a one-button action.

Also, Orc does have solid air options - Wyverns and Bats.
I mostly miss the “mighty dragons” from a historical/lore point of view (Alexstrasza), but that’s compensated by strong anti-air like Headhunters + Raiders.

So balance is fine now, everything ok.

17

Thats the reason I quit wc3. Undead have been nerft to the ground.

1 Like
18

Not true, I think they are quite competitive.
In a parallel thread, people are complaining that they are too strong, especially Frost Wyrms. That’s ironic.

1 Like
19

Undead heroes’ have very strong spell damage and control tools so even if their basic units were worse than the other races their heroes can still carry them to victory.

20

against Mana burn of DH? no sense at all

21

i am sure i can beat your ud with one hand. UD is among the hardest one to play