Orc balance (with Grubby's and Happy's comments)

General Discussion
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There is a similar topic on UD balance on this forum, so I thought it will be cool to have one on ORC race. As usual, please leave your comments and suggestions below.

Grubby’s (very short) comment on ORC (1h54m53s):

Happy’s comments on ORC (4h16m20s):

Personal wishlist:

Spirit Walker.
The Disenchant should not remove friendly Spirit Link. There should be synergy between the two spells this unit has.

Witch Doctor.
Increase hp from 315 to 320, then the hp progression will become 320-360-400. Also his damage 10-14 can be slightly buffed to 11-14 (on average 12.5, which is half of the average HH damage).
Witch doctor needs some attention and should become more useful in fights.

(Optional) Stasis Trap stun could be reduced from 6(2) to 5(2) or 4(2), but at the same the activation time should decrease to 9 or 8 seconds.
Healing ward hp could be increased from 5 to 25, so that it would be one hit harder to destroy (but not for a hero).

Blademaster.
Nerf critical strike. For example, the total damage of a crit could use only 50% of the item (green) damage: (regular dmg + 0.5*item damage) x (crit multiplier).
Blademaster should not be the hero that single-handedly kills the whole army. I would rather see orc’s units to be more involved.

Far Seer. Far Sight could additionally grant 5%/10%/15% attack range to Far Seer per level. This way Far Seer’s attack range will be 600/630/660/690. Add Level 1 buff to the Crystal Ball too.

Another option. Far Sight could become an aura that grants +25/+50/+75 attack range to friendly units. Far Seer then loses ability to scout any part of the map (he has wolves for that), but still can use Far Sight to “dust” the area around him.

War Mill.
(1) Remove Advanced Spiked Barricades upgrade, leave only the first one. Rearrange the icons to be

1st row: Melee Attack, Range Attack, Armor
2nd row: Spiked Barricades, Reinforced Defenses

The chance that Spiked Barricades upgrade is used in a game is less than 1%, the chance that Advanced Spiked Barricades upgrade is used is less than 0.0001. It makes sense to leave the first upgrade for situations when orc has war mill and tries to defend T2 melee attack or has extra wood in late game to spend on defence.

(2) (Optional) Decrease cost from 205 to 200.

Orcs have always problems with wood in early game, because they simply don’t want to build more than 7 peons on lumber. Peons take supply and aren’t as useful as wisps (scout, dispel), ghouls (fight, creep, need only 3) or peasants (militia can creep, expand, powerbuild).

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Troll Berserkers are insane units with t3. I agree with Happy, they should not have 475 hp. They even got a buff to the berserk ability, so they take 10% less damage when using it compared to before.

It would probably make sense to shift power of t3 Troll Berserkers into t1 instead and not make Troll Berserkers insane units for their supply and cost. They basically have stats of a 3 supply unit and supply/ cost of a 2 supply unit.
Just compare them to Ghouls for example, Ghouls are mostly useless once players unlock t2 and their t3 changes nothing about their problem of just becoming exp tomes for your opponent.

The same happend to Flying Machines actually. They now have 250 hp, 18 damage and upgrades like Flak cannons for aoe damage and bombs for siege ground attacks. All this for a cheap cost of 1 supply and like 110 gold/30 wood. They are the best t1 supply unit in the game by far and should never have received such huge buffs while Destroyers got a heavy nerf. Now Destroyers are almost useless but since its only dispel option UD will have no other option than to make them.

We see this especially in the UD vs Orc matchup where UD is struggeling a lot. T3 Orc will have masses of Troll Berserkers which prevent UD from using Destroyers and then transition into spirit link or just hex and focus heroes.

See a pattern here? 2 Units with insane stats which make them into a unit worth 1 more supply but cost 1 less supply and less ressources. Nightelf got a buff to their t3 archer upgrade aswell which makes them strong if massed. Result of this has been Nightelf players defeating UD and Orc with mass Archers in competitive games.

Meanwhile Ghouls got changes which did absolutely nothing for them, they need buffs to surviability instead of speed just so they arrive and donate exp faster. With these changes, every race will have a good upgrade on t3 to make their t1 units usable.

Heroes:

It makes no sense to buff Blademaster again. Agree with Happy, the damage of critical strike should be lower and it should be more evenly spread out.

Ironically a certain change to UD benefits Orc even more: The vampiric aura buffs. UD can’t even make proper use of this aura because Ghouls die instantly and Aboms don’t deal enough damage and spend more time blocking each other because their colossion size is way too big. Because of this change critical strike should go back to being agility bonus only.

Farseer is alright but Farsight will probably never be used. The wolves are very strong, especially since Orc will mass Troll Berserkers which focus down destroyers instantly so UD has 0 dispel in the lategame.

Tauren Chieftain received huge buffs when he gained increased speed already. His level 3 Stomp is better than all ultimates for UD which is ridicolous.

The stun is way too long and the cooldown is too low aswell. Recently its damage got buffed aswell. The damage can stay but the duration makes it so the entire army keeps getting stunned with only 1 second to act on level 3. Everyone agrees on this.

Overall Orc has the best heroes in the game by far, best level 6 heroes in the game aswell. Meanwhile UD is still stuck with unusable ultimates for its 2 main heroes and Crypt lord is still a joke.

Blizzard needs to finally adress UD issues and realize that abilities like Warp stop, critical strike and units that are too good for their cost are bad for the game if not all races have access to them (again, UD does not because t3 Ghouls are garbage).

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Ah so can we get another thread for human balance and night elf?

Just so we can see some clear problems like

Dk ghoul abom
Spirit walker
Bears
Mk clap

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You know that you can add ?t=hms for the timestamp, right?

Activation Delay: 10 seconds

https://liquipedia.net/warcraft/Witch_Doctor

Isn’t it too awkward?

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Yh another blademaster revert would be a small slap on the balancing teams face.

Though the current state of undead should already be a big slap

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If they nerf the Blademaster again, it simply won’t be used. It’s entire usefulness comes from it being OP and able to destroy an army, otherwise no one would use it if it were ‘just balanced’. It’s kind of an odd thing but that’s what it is.

I mean look at Demon Hunters. It got perfectly balanced, but people used it way less because at the core, Melee ‘Assassin’ heroes require way more micro than their caster/summoner counterparts. Their entire risk/reward comes from skillful micro of when to attack, when to peel, and if they’re completely balanced aside other heroes then the skill factor makes using picking hero less appealing. You’ve got the same amount of risk and less reward.

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Blademaster isn’t only about having OP critical strikes. A huge part of its strength comes from scouting and stealing exp + items. Without the Farseer you only have Grunts to scout in the earlygame which can be dangerous and you need them for creeping aswell. Thats why people level up Windwalk 2 on level 3 instead of critical strike in almost any situation. The nerf to critical strike only really affects him at level 4-5.

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Can you stop posting the same stupid stuff 4 times a day?

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If you think it is stupid, you can ignore it. This forum and possibly reddit are places where people can exchange their ideas on what they would like to see in Reforged (in terms of balance). The discussion is very biased, but at least many of us do not pretend we are experts - I just say some ideas that feel right to me. For example, Adunai and some other people think most of them are trash and explain why - and then I understand why I was wrong. But some of the ideas turn out to be decent and worth considering.

I also think we should listen more carefully to pro-gamers, because they understand the game better than us and we can learn from them.

I agree all these posts could be pointless if nobody from Blizzard has time to read them and filter out. But this is the only way I know of to reach out to community and developers.

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I like the threads, you bring some interesting ideas, not that i agree with most of them.

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