Simple fix: Carrion swarm no longer deals damage to mechanical units. Tanks got nerfed already, that was the intended use for the damage to mechanical units. In the current state, undead can just solo dreadlord and mass destroyers. With t3 exp boost for solo hero, dreadlord 5 is reached very easily.
Currently, the ONLY half passable counter to this play style is rifles, because level 3 carrion swarm one shots flying machines. It’s still a bad counter, because a simple switch to abominations + carrion swarm 3 shreds rifles too.
But you nerf rifles and now there’s no viable option.
Alternative changes could be increasing flying machine hps (not great for other race MUs) or decreasing carrion swarm damage (arguably this needs to be the solution because against any race carrion swarm worker harass is too easy and effective).
Hopefully you read this Kaivax and take these thoughts back to the devs.
Nerf rifles, do nothing about Carrion Swarm flying machine one shots = no acceptable AA for HU vs UD
the issue is not carrion swarm, its destroyers.
destroyers are a toxic unit by design (spellbreakers are the same, dryads to some extent). the whole idea of “magic immune” standard units should be reconsidered.
resistant, yes, but not immune.
destroyers should be flying anti casters, yet they are a one way route into borked up heavy air, which also cannibalizes frost wyrms.
destroyers have terrible fighting stats for the resources spent without mana, their dispel is so weak they need to be massed to provide meaningful dispel capability and once massed they become a real problem because of their magic immunity and tankiness. now, if you want to use them for damage, you again need to mass them, because the only way to privide mana for them is massing statues, what results in more destroyers that need more statues.
either way you’ll end up with a flock of high hp, high armor magic immune flying units that demand very very very specific counters albeit being kinda worthless at the same time. destoyers are rather weak, but their mixture of stats (tankiness, magic immunity, magic damage) is so screwed up they still kinda work and sometimes are mandatory for undead to win.
undead has a couple of very bad design problems, and destroyers are one of them.
undead has a few very overpowered aspects to the race (nuke for example) that cover up the absolute lackluster design in other areas. remove dk, fiends and destroyers from undead and the race is completely unplayable in any matchup except for early game cheese.
any other race still functions if you take away one hero and two units.
destroyers need a complete rebalance. this will solve ALOT of problems concerning undead balance in general.
They added the mechanical damage in a recent patch to give UD a way to play against Flying Machines who beat every UD air unit. Flying Machines are toxic because they completely beat any air composition in the game with their 400 movement speed (fastest in the game), ranged attack and splash damage at tier 2. UD needs a way to beat that and that is Carrion Swarm.
If they go Destroyers, you go Rifles. If they then make Aboms, you go Knights or Gryphons.
You overplay the Rifle nerf, Rifle DPS is still higher than it was in 1.29. Carrion Swarm is great against workers because… it’s supposed to be. It does a bunch of damage in a cone, which is supposed to be good against units with low health, aka workers. You beat it with Arcane Towers that zap mana or you go after his hero with Storm Bolt or Mana Drain. If the DL can go inside your base, he deserves to Carrion a ton of your workers. I mean it would be just the same with Shockwave, Thunderclap or Fan of Knives.
Just web them down, it’s really quite easy.
You don’t have the luxury of such easy tech switches when the dreadlord is continually wiping out your entire economy for the price on 1 mana pot.
It’s not the same as clap or fan, because the range is much larger. Dreadlord can just sit outside a closed base and cast it on workers meaning instead of guarding the peasant line with towers, you need to guard a ring around your entire base with arcane towers so there is no area outside of arcane range. And then there is of course a simple counter to that of teleport staff onto a shade behind the peasant line, or simply zeppelin drops and pick ups behind the peasant line. Point is, similarly to your last poor point, the economy harass is so simple and easy, and takes much more resources to defend than to pull off, you don’t have the luxury of making such elaborate defenses AND defending whatever unit composition is coming. Usually just mass destros unless the UD is stupid or trolling, because as stated before, the only counter to destros can be 1 shoted by carrion swarm.
If you’re having problems with flying machines that seems like a l2p issue, because like I said before. Just web them down. Never fight with destroyers in a space your fiends can’t reach, always take a position where you can attack some part of the human base and the human needs to engage into your entire army. Don’t try and use destroyers above trees and take a 1 on 1 fight vs flying machines. Pretty simple man.
Carrion swarm is capped at 5 units isn’t it? That’s nothing if you’re massing gyros…
The scenario you gave is something that practically no other player has complained about and there are a ton of things you can do, but you actually have to do them instead of saying something should be removed.
The Dreadlord cannot be in your base the entire game and wipe peasants left and right. Carrion Swarm costs 100 mana and only deals 75 damage at level 1. He needs to do 3 Carrions to kill a peasant and that costs 300 mana and if you literally do nothing about it.
You need to place an Arcane tower in your base so it zaps the Dreadlord.
You also need to scout better to see if he is coming. And guess what? Humans have the best scouts in the game. They get a scouts that have 500-health, have fortified armor and only cost 80 gold! And they also give food! Seriously, build a bunch of farms around your base to see if he’s coming.
Destroyers are a tier 3.5 unit that has piss poor DPS. If he’s massing them, you should be able to do lots of things way before that. You should be creeping hard and pressuring the DL. You should go MK with the Bloodmage so you can banish, stun him and zap his mana. If he’s going Fiends, you can laugh because Fiends are now slower without the DK and can’t be coiled. If he goes Ghouls, you go Thunderclap and laugh again.
So again, proper scouting by using farms will make Dreadlord Carrions not a problem. Put a bunch outside your base so you can see way before he comes in. And get an Arcane Tower or two. He needs 2 Carrions to kill a peasant at level 3 Carrion which will take a long time to get to level 5. If he’s using a Zeppelin, you can… make more towers. Carrion is only a threat at high levels which is in the late game, which is plenty of time for you to make scout farms and tower up.
Mass Destroyers are always going to be hard to deal with because they are magic-immune and they can fly. The best option is to literally ignore them because you can’t make Flying Machines as they will die to Carrion. Just push his base with Riflemen and Knights. Keep your base safer with Tanks with rockets. If you do this, he can’t push your base because of Tanks. He also can’t engage your army directly because Rifles eat up Destroyers.
And again, you just love to blow things out of proportion. Current Rifles are still way better than 1.29. 1.29 Rifles had a cooldown of 1.5. They then went to 1.35. Now it’s 1.4. 1.4 is still better than 1.5. Rifles still beat Destroyers and have better DPS than them.
Destroyers have gotten nerfs. They do less damage. They lost 50 health. They do less summoning damage. Corruption Orb only reduces armor by 4 not 5, so they do less damage.
Undead literally have no other way to deal with mass Flying Machine besides Fiends. What anti-air options do humans have? Riflemen. Flying Machine. Water Elemental. Dragonhawk Riders. Siege Engines. Humans have at least 5 different ways of dealing with air. There is no Undead unit that can deal with Flying Machines besides Fiends.
So again, to stop Dreadlord harass, scout and tower up. Easy.
To counter Destroyers, push the Undead with Rifles and Knights. If they are a huge problem at home, get Siege Engines with rockets.
Actually give these tips a try.
Dude. Have you ever actually tried using tanks as AA versus a mass air strat not in 4v4? If it works, your opponent is not very good. Slow, low dps ground unit vs mobile air unit that can harass multiple points = not a good counter.
And yes, this is because most people don’t go flying machines any more. They go rifles which have now been nerfed again so we need other options. Along with a buff to a spell that is already a good anti rifle spell.
Also
5 ways that are all inferior to the one that undead have. Only thing close to web is shackles, which is not even close in practice because it is channeling, while web is a one time cast and the unit can then move away while higher health units attack. Incidentally, using hawks is useless precisely because of web and the fact that shackles gets canceled by web.
You are also forgetting one of the best melee air units, gargoyles. Which in this scenario are helped even more by vamp aura from the dreadlord. With carrion swarm plus literally 5-6 gargs, 15+ flying machines are absolutely useless.
When you say
You should probably consider that I have done so, most likely a lot more times than you, given that your main advice is ‘get tanks and push into the undead base with knights and rifles’.
P.S. In Tod’s PTR breakdown video he names Carrion Swarm as a top 3 broken spell right now, along with Thunder Clap and War Stomp. You strike me as another ‘Tod hater’ so I’m guessing you’ll just shrug this off but consider that he is naming one of HIS OWN most used spells in this. We just want an equal playing field across all races and currently there is no adequate way for human to deal with undead mass air if the player is going dreadlord.
Carrion swarm doesn’t even oneshot gyros…
…do you need me to post unit and spell stats?
Flying machine has 250 HP, carrion lvl 3 deals 200 dmg
h ttp://classic.battle.net/war3/human/units/flyingmachine.shtml
That page is not up to date my friend. If you check the stats for rifles you’ll see an attack cooldown of 1.5 for instance. Check out this page instead:
https ://liquipedia.net/warcraft/Flying_Machine
Well regardless, it’s too much damage. One cast and a single shot from destroyers or gargs and they’re dead. Even panda is only dealing 170 damage on level 3 which gives you more of a chance to move back and repair or use staffs.
The problem isn’t even necessarily just mass destros. Any mass air strat from undead using dreadlord and human has basically no chance. Mass gargs in particular. Rifles are your only option there too and they’re already not a very great counter and they get nerfed because of flying mobility, and again, carrion with mana pots + a second hero aoe.
For me, undead as a race must be reworked altogether. At this moment this race has 3 units that are playable AND overpowered - they come from 2 buildings and undeads have absolutely 0 motivation to think of different strategies or units.
It is absolutely outrageous how a unit costing 100 gold (flying machines) can die in a second while the undead has only units that need the player to be a retard to die…
A lot of the time, human loses only because he plays on equal terms to the undead but loses units that give the overpowered undead heroes enough EXP to gain big levels.
It is the newbiest race in the game
Part of what you’re saying really applies to Dreadlord as well, but when he is played as a second or 3rd hero. The way I’ve seen it that makes the most sense from the perspective of how to counter HU is to get Dreadlord second and Lich 3rd while playing the same old fiends into destros thing.
To your point, undead heroes ARE going to get exp and be 5/4/3 pretty much no matter what you do. Whether it be creeping when you cede map control to defend your expo or just from the lovely pick offs and worker kills undead is so fond of. So you play a fiend-destro army with a level 3 or 4 dreadlord and still a level 3 lich. Human HAS to go flying machine knight to counter. Even at level 2 carrion swarm, it only takes 2 casts to kill gyros. Web them down, carrion in a line. Way too easy. 100 gold per gone and mass exp to the UD heroes.
Idk where this fallacy that UD can’t counter flying machines comes from. Because the same thing basically works if you get a pitlord 3rd, you just need, gasp a bit of micro to not rain of fire onto your own units while it hits the webbed flying machines. Unlike the panda, you can coil the pitlord. But even Panda would still be viable when going mass destros, if dreadlord/pitlord weren’t just so much easier to pull off.
I’m unsure a rework of undead will ever happen, though maybe this is what the crypt lord changes are trying to begin. I’ve pretty much just accepted the basic vanilla fiend destro thing and learned to play against it, but when they add a dreadlord instead of dark ranger etc, or just go straight dreadlord into mass air, there’s just no learning to play against it. You have no AA capable of taking 200 aoe damage over and over that can deal with UD air. MAYBE if gryphons were changed to pierce damage so they could attack destros, OR destros changed to be only spell resistant and not magic damage resistant, humans could make it work because gryphons can stay alive in web a bit longer. But those changes are a lot larger and have possible unintended consequences, versus just changing dreadlord back to only hitting non mech units. It was an experiment, the experiment failed. Tanks got nerfed and you don’t need the carrion damage to deal with them in the smaller numbers we seem them played in now. Just admit the mistake and revert.
its clear they just want this game to be more of a MOBA than a RTS. Hu isnt designed to play that way so it’s time to jumpship to the other moba races. They clearly don’t know what they’re doing and as human players are we really going to wait another decade for them to figure it out? It’s time to start over boys that swhat im realizing
Here’s how they can ballance it. Rebuff mountain king and you’ll see a lot more of equel fights.