Orcs have been out of any competition on pro and semi pro levels for years now.
I am not going to mumble about things that I think are imbalanced, etc. I will only drop some facts:
Since Blizzard started balancing game regularely (2018) Orcs haven’t made it into top 2 in yearly earnings. That’s 7 years already of being the worst or 2nd worst race in the game. 2025 is not any different - Orc is the worst performing race this year so far. You can check it yourself on W3 liquipedia
Ongoing Dolphin Warcraft Superleague (as of 28.08.2025)
Winrates for Orcs per matchup:
Orc vs NE - 37,8%
Orc vs UD - 21,9%
Orc vs HU - 35,6%
Average 31,8%
Last Global Tier 1 tournament won by Orc player was 6 years ago - Warcraft Gold League 2019 Winter
Tier 2 tournaments don’t look any better - it’s pretty much UD winning vast majority
Even lower tier like B2W Weekly?
Orcs won 8 out of 160 of those - exactly 5%
The entire success of Orcs, or lack of it, is on the shoulders one exceptional player only - Lyn.
For years we haven’t seen any new talents from Orcs raising up that would be able to get even close to his level. How come NE has their new star Kaho? How Labyrinth has been able to play so brilliantly in last months? Humans seem to always get back when their greatest players leave. Sky retired? Infi and TH came in. They retired aswell? Fortitude came in. For Orcs is the opposite - promising players either are not able to break through or they abandon the game/ change race eventually. And this is despite Orcs being a popular race.
In my humble opinion, current balance influencers’ ideas have been mostly failures. The division between good races and bad races is now very clear.
I think it’s in the best interest of Blizzard to finally do something about it. It’s not healthy environmtent when you leave big chunk of your playerbase unispired and unmotivated.
Make peons, grunts and raiders start with pillage upgrade already researched. It would be fun to see peons and grunts actually attack buildings. And some games people dont even make a barracks. Also as I’ve posted before, burning oil ability should deal no friendly fire and no self damage.
This is a good start on discussion, but you need more than just the data from one competition. A broader picture is needed to ensure that changes made improve the game for everyone at all levels of play. you cannot balance a game well by ONLY looking at pros.
I’m curious who these “influencers” are. (God, I hate that word.) The proper way to balance a game is by using data, not by listening to any “influencer” whether it’s you or the ones you’re complaining about. And data doesn’t mean just win rates, it means comparing unit matchups, effects of abilities, and all kinds of other parameters.
There’s way too many armchair game balancers who come in here and just go “LOL ORC HASN’T WON A TOURNY AND UD WON A BUNCH LULZ. NERF UD BUFF ORC!”
This kind of conversation is useless. If you don’t have the knowledge to identify WHY UD is winning or WHY orc is sucking, then you really should just refrain from commenting- it’ snot productive. Tell Blizzard WHY things are broken. is it because Tauren suck? are orc’s heroes weak? Why is UD so strong? Is it ghouls? frost wyrms? economy issues? Just saying a race is OP is useless. WHY is it op?
And funny enough, the majority of the people complaining here can’t identify any specific balance issues. just “UD OP” “ORC SUX”
You’re absolutely right about needing data. But of course, with or without data, you can’t convince someone who refuses to see. When all the Orc players abandon this game entirely, your goal will be accomplished.
As for your viewpoint, I have only one thing to say: You’ve never actually played this game — and even if you have, you’re terrible at it. Straight-up trash.
Leaving the data/warranted or not argument aside (IMO it never goes anywhere), I’ve honestly had a pretty hard time coming up with answers to what kind of changes exactly Orc even really needs. Pretty much every single unit they can build has a place in some builds barring maybe the Demolisher due primarily to redundance with the Raider who is an incredible race-defining unit. I mean I think Burning Oil deserves a buff, sure, but it’s not gonna change anything either.
Casters from the Spirit Lodge are maybe a bit too inaccessible so it could be made cheaper or faster to build to make tech switches into it not as prohibitive, but really I almost feel like that applies to every race’s caster building (counting Ancient of Winds for Night Elf) so it could be a change done across the board. But the actual spells of the casters seem to be in a fine place. Maybe the Shaman and/or Witch Doctor could have a higher base attack damage to at least make them more valuable on the field besides their spells, idk, hard to tell what they’d need exactly to be played more often.
I’d be all for giving Blademaster 1 of his base Agility points back, but meanwhile IMO the Mirror Image dealing damage change has caused more problems across the board than it addressed, especially outside of 1v1. I think it should go back to doing no damage and giving no EXP (and also going back to 3 seconds cooldown), but instead only taking +50% damage instead of +100%, which would make it arguably stronger than now for early creeping (being a much better tank) while keeping its lategame insane scaling in check.
Another thought I had was that it’d be cool to give Wind Riders their venomous attack baseline, but make it non-stacking and only last 10 seconds. The upgrade would become “Improved Envenomed Spears” and increase the damage from 3 to 10 per second. I think the poison being a non-stacking but more baseline powerful effect like this would be a better direction for the unit, as it makes it very valuable to have just one or a couple Wind Riders while more discouraging making an absolute mass of them since their poison would stack up less.
But that’s kinda all fairly niche stuff that doesn’t enable a proper new playstyle. I’d be hesitant to buff Orc core units like the Grunt, Headhunter and Raider, because they all feel like they’re in a fairly solid place at the moment.
What do you think? You say Orc needs help, but then, what help do they actually need?
I most certainly have played this game, never ever made any claims of being particularly good at it. It’s a skill issue though, not a knowledge issue. You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know. And when you do play this game, you really should try your best to refrain from going around calling people trash. Most people aren’t good at this game (micro is hard yo) and people who aren’t good at this game or games like it generally are very much aware of that and don’t need people like you to tell them that. It’s so funny when you go into a game full of people with MMRs in the 2000s and one of them starts calling people trash, all I can ever say to that is “duh, captain obvious, I couldn’t tell from the MMRs of these players.”
But that said, you haven’t really said what about my viewpoint you take issue with- it seems to me like you’re just saying 'you’re bad so your opinion is invalid." But sorry to say, you don’t have to be good at the game yourself to have an idea of how it works or to have game knowledge. You can have mechanical skill issues, you might just like particular units and use them even though it’s not a good strategy becuase its fun, you might have physical limitations that make the game more difficult, but you play anyway because you like a challenge, etc.
Both human and orc have a close and long range siege unit; demolishers can clear trees and such while raiders do not. Long range siege is great to provoke fights without revealing everything you have. you send a couple of them to attack, the enemy reacts, you pull them back, and you’re trying to bait them into your army. So while their core functions are similar the way they go about it is different. and again, raiders lack an attack ground command, like the demolisher / wagon / morts / ballistas do.
So, you want to know something that you probably never really understood. Okay, let me tell you something. When an Orc player has the same MMR as his opponent—whether it’s NE, HUM, or UD—he only has about a 35% chance to win. If the Orc player’s MMR is even slightly lower than his opponent’s, his chance of winning drops to 15% at most.
One small mistake early on, and the Orc player will almost certainly lose. But other races? They can lose two units (like ACs, Footmen, or Ghouls) or even their hero, and it’s no big deal—they can still come back and win. For Orc, though, if you lose one Grunt, two Headhunters, or even just one Burrow, the game is pretty much over.
How can I say this with such confidence? Because I’ve been playing this game for over 20 years. And yes, I’m one of those players with around 2000 MMR—exactly the range you were talking about.
I’m curious what your basis is for this statment, because it sure looks like you’re just pulling it out of thin air.
What a coincidence! I’ve ALSO been playing for over 20 years and I’m also one of those players in crap MMR tier. So what’s your point?
Frankly as HU (the vast majority of the time) I actually struggle more against Orc than any other race, mostly because of how much early game power they have over HU in terms of harass. Far more than the other races IMO.
My statement is based on data — my actual gameplay statistics. I play hundreds of games every season and have discussed this extensively with other players. You can question the data, but I’m just telling you what I’ve observed and experienced firsthand.
You think Human is struggling against Orc? Are you implying that Orc is stronger than Human and that Human should be buffed? Sorry, but I can’t agree with that. For a long time, Orc could barely win a single game against the Paladin and Rifleman combo.
I’m also curious — if you’re really at 2000 MMR, you must have been matched against pro players sometimes, right?
Well I mean I have my own stats and they don’t point to greater success vs orc than the other races. If anything I win vs NE and mirrors more than the other two.
Yeah, that’s my experience. Perhaps its my unconventional tactics that shine and fail against different races than others typically would. I don’t know, but that’s my experience.
They can match with anyone if the wait time grows long enough, so yes. I’ve played with and against many of the other people you see here regularly on the forum.