Nerf Paladin + Riflemen: This Strat Is Ruining the Game

General Discussion
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Captain, pro players don’t use shields. Nobody is using shields right now. If someone is a newbie maby. the shield is one of the worst abilities you can use in the game at the moment. A few years ago, maybe regular players used it, but now, as a player, you need to protect your hero by trying not to let your Paladin die. That means controlling him properly so he doesn’t lose health. So, in principle, you use the Paladin like other heroes. Players buy protection in the shop with their Paladin or just focus not to die or use blood mage.

This is why people are frustrated right now. The Devotion Aura is too strong, and rifles are hard to kill, especially with the armor and extra health provided by the Paladin. When a Paladin reaches level 3 or 4, it’s incredibly hard to beat them. ^^ That’s why some people, including myself, are frustrated about it. Even though I’ve never played Human before, if I were to play the game again today, I would choose Human. I think most players, if they switch to Human and have low ratings with their other races, would see their rating improve after just a few days of practice with building orders. I’m sure of it.

But I think the game is already dying, and the last significant update was in December. Nothing more will fix it, except some bug fixes, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J-Ok5D7dqM&t=464s

There is video.
Also, the Blood Mage is the one that provides the “shield” to the Paladin if needed, with Fade. It’s a strong combo.

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Funny how this ability you speak of helps the paladin not lose health, and then you give all this advice about helping your paladin not lose health. devotion aura in early game does not mitigate very much damage, no matter how much you “control him properly.”

This is literally the first time i’ve ever seen the words “Devotion aura is too strong.” If it was so strong, everyone would be using it, even newbies. But I almost never see it used by anyone until level 7. But you know what, if you want to nerf an ability that already doesn’t get a ton of use, I guess that’s fine with me, as it won’t really change anything.

Also: the game is stable, the situation isn’t getting any better but it’s not “dying.” it’s basically status quo as it has been for the last several years. And if it is dying, one allegedly broken strat in a game where most people don’t even play the regular mode (i.e. custom games are probably more popular than normals) is not likely to be a significant contributing factor to that.

As I said before: Humans at high level play have a less than 50% win rate. We shouldn’t be nerfing the “best” strategy if that strategy cannot win 50% at the pro level. We have the stats that show this. This strategy is only particularly effective at low level play, i.e. with the “newbies” that Sprenter is referring to.

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Captain, I swear, the Aura is the best for Paladins because the Blood Mage’s Fade ability is a huge disadvantage for Paladins when they’re at low health. The Shield was something every Paladin used 3 years ago or so, but now with Rifles and Paladins becoming a bigger thing, the meta has shifted.

I’ve been watching a lot of tournaments, and everyone is talking about this. Sure, people who are fans of Humans or Fortitude and Starbuck might argue differently, but people who aren’t taking sides are saying what I’m saying. If you look at Starbuck and Fortitude, they are literally 200-300 rating points lower than Happy (sometimes even 400 points on WC3Champion). Despite that, Happy struggles against them when they use Rifles and Paladins. He has to use a strategy that he’s not familiar with, like going Crypt Lord and Ghouls, which is not ideal for him. He ends up losing a lot of Ghouls because of the Paladin and Rifle combo. But if Starbuck and Fortitude just add two extra towers, it becomes insanely hard for Happy to win. Even though Happy has better micro than Starbuck and Fortitude, the Rifle/Pala combo is just that hard to counter.

You can also see that Starbuck and Fortitude aren’t necessarily the best at micro, yet they still manage to win their matches against players like Lyn and Happy, who have much better micro and faster decision-making. The Rifleman and Paladin combination is incredibly difficult to deal with, and it’s also one of the easiest combos to control.

Now, because of this, Happy has to play Crypt Lord against Humans, even when he’s not facing Rifles and Paladins directly. It’s just become necessary. And he can never change his hero when facing Humans. He always needs to go with Crypt Lord as his main hero against Humans. But nobody seems to understand that. Happy is actively trying, during tournaments, to figure out how to counter Rifles and Paladins. He’s searching for a strategy that can take down the Rifleman and Paladin combo, but until this day, he’s still trying to figure out a way to win against it. It’s the only combo that pro players are still struggling to counter. The Rifle and Paladin combination started becoming more popular in tournaments around 2023-2024, if I’m not mistaken.

If you’re an Orc, Undead, or Elf with a 1-2k rating on WC3Champion or a 3-5k rating on Battle.net, and you start playing Human and just nail your build order and go for Rifles and Paladins, I guarantee you’ll gain at least a 5% rating boost compared to your current standing. I might be exaggerating here, but at least Human players will gain 5% or 10% higher rating if they go pala/rifels.

Captain, just to clarify, I’m not attacking you or saying you’re wrong. This has been a common complaint in live tournaments. If you look at Happy, Lyn, and Eer0, you’ll see the issue I’m talking about. Happy’s rating difference from players like Starbuck and Fortitude isn’t just about micro. It’s about the Rifleman and Paladin meta making it harder for him to adapt.

I’m not sure when Starbuck and Fortitude started using Rifles and Paladins as a meta, but it gives them that slight advantage. The thing is, Happy’s micro is a lot better than many players below him, but against Rifles and Paladins, it’s harder for him to maintain his level. And the funny thing is, Fortitude and Starbuck are not considered top-tier micro players (they’re actually some of the worst micro players in the top 10 rankings).

https://warcraft3.info/stats/elo_ranking?date=05.11.22
Here, you can see where Starbuck and Fortitude were ranked.

i think here it was meta 2023 for pro players to use the paladin strat.

https://warcraft3.info/stats/elo_ranking?date=02.11.23
Look at how fast they gained 200 extra rating in just one year.

https://warcraft3.info/stats/elo_ranking?date=23.02.25
and at 2025

You can clearly see a pattern with players like Happy, Lyn, Eer0, Laby, Focus, Fly, and others.

But don’t forget, the Rifle and Paladin combo has always been strong. The difference now is that pro players didn’t used to rely on “lame” strategies like this, but now they’re taking advantage of every opportunity they can. It’s not that Warcraft 3 has boosted Rifles or Paladins, it’s that the strategy has always been there. It’s just that pro players started using it in their tournaments towards the end of 2023 or so. This combo has been effective since the beginning of Warcraft 3, but it became somewhat “bullied” by people who thought it was too strong and to esay. However, now it’s a new era with a new mindset. :P.

(Don’t need to read this, not so important)

iIf I type something wrong or misunderstand something, let me know and I’ll explain. I know a lot about these WC3 pro players, and I’ve been watching since the start. I was a big fan of Grubby when you had to download his videos from a website, and people didn’t even know him back then. I think I was one of his first fans! People didn’t even know him at that time. :stuck_out_tongue: I think it was around 2002 or something like that. But he started his first tournament in 2003 with the Danish clan, if I remember correctly.

I may have been watching and playing the game for a long time, but I’m really bad at it. :stuck_out_tongue: Haha, it makes no sense, but what can I do? That’s life, my friend! Hehe ^^.

Okay, take care, Captain! I’ll see you in a few weeks or so. I’m just here to check if they’ve changed the game or not. :stuck_out_tongue: Take care! ^^

obs! Let me know if you want the story about Sok (Human) and Hawk (Human) too; I have answers for them as well.

And please, Captain, I haven’t been disrespectful or anything against you. This is just how normal people talk right now. So try not to see it as me trying to be a jerk or something. Got a little weird when you were saying this, I was looking through my old text to see if I said something bad to you.

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Don’t worry, I respect civilized debate. Really, all I can tell you is I’ve looked at the statistics available and at the highest levels of play (which at least theoretically includes people such as Happy), the win rates against two of the three other races as seen on https://www.w3champions.com/OverallStatistics/winrates-per-race-and-map, (Night Elf, Orc, and technically Random as well) are well under 50%.

Now, there could be issues with this data, maybe it’s not actually current (the data gets pulled in seperately after loading the page, so it -seems- current, but it also doesn’t show 2.x current patches in the patches list- but at the same time, I don’t think there’s been any changes to Human in that time that would affect this much, and people have been discussing this since long before 2.0).

This is the only data available though, since Blizzard obviously doesn’t publish any beyond the leaderboards which don’t tell us much. And forgive me, but I can’t really make any concrete judgements baced on ancedotal evidence of a few videos. We need data, and without it, all we really have is a lot of passionate arguing for one side or the other. I respect the skill of the players named, but we need more insight than just a couple of people.

Now, I’ve seen plenty of first hand experience that rifledin is the way to go at the lower ranks. But considering that the only available data tells me that this isn’t working as well at high levels of play, how do we adjust this without hurting Human at the pro level? Like I said before, at low tier play, i.e. random joe guy like me, I do not see Devotion Aura used much, so this doesn’t really seem like the reason why it works so well. Though at the same time, if newbs aren’t using that and they’re winning with this, then perhaps that’s the best place to make adjustments if anything at all. :shrug:

The thing is, the benefit from Devotion, at least in my craptastic player opinion, is not all that big. If you reduce it much, it will be almost useless. And on top of that, there’s been a few Pally vs Death Knight debates around here (as they are fairly similar heroes) and generally most of the people who engaged with the topic seemed to think DK is better. So do we really want to widen that gap, assuming it exists?

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I think a nerf-worthy strategy is one where the execution is significantly more difficult than the counter-play for a significant group of players, which is hard to detect through win-rate alone. The ELO system should keep most players at near-50% win rates no matter what.

Instead of looking at win-rates, I think it’s interesting to look at these factors:

Did the strategy make them stronger, or something else?

Was pally-rifles their first viable build, or did they do a different build before? Did they start playing/practicing a lot more after learning that build? Do they continue practice any other builds about as often as pally-rifles, and is their win-rate with those builds comparable? How do Human players that play pallyrifles compare to their peers in other aspects of skill expression in the game?

How well are other players adapting?

In other words, is this a truly OP strategy, or just a novel one? Can the community collectively “nerf” the strategy with a huge community effort to understand the best way to punish it? What are player’s win-rates against pallyrifles over time? Have any players tapered off playing pallyrifles as their win-rates go down? Is there a strategy that allows pallyrifles be scouted before the opponent prepares a response to it? Strong, novel strategies always boost MMRs for a while until the community learns its weaknesses, but nerf-worthy ones don’t become significantly weaker even after that.

How would you nerf it, and what’s the cost/benefit of that?

Can nerfing pallyrifles increase the diversity of strategies before scouting? If so, can it be done without forcing Human to be so weak that they have to gamble/cheese in order to win? If the nerf significantly weakens Human overall, is there a buff that can be exchanged that can be used well in other existing Human builds, or help foster new, interesting builds we haven’t seen?

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These players play multiple races, not just one, thats why they maintain their rating even if they play a race that is underperforming.

As for execution, difficulty of execution only explains why the strategy performs differently at different skill levels. But given that this strategy seems to be much stronger at low levels of play than high ones, that tells me the execution isn’t an issue here.

Admittedly, even though I think devotion aura really isn’t that good, if this is what is making the difference at high levels, it could be a solution since low level players probably already do not use it much. I suppose if its power was weighted towards level 3, i.e. reduce it at level 1 but ramp it up to he original value at max level, it would retain its weight while having limited impact on the early game, which is where rifles stand out most.

Anyway, while win rates are far from the only metric for us to consider, if they deviate too far from 50% it is a clear sign of an issue somewhere. At this point you look at other metrics to determine what the cause might be.