Night Elf buffs went through when they needed significant and harsh nerfs only.
The whole previous PTR iteration thread was filled with the community showing this fact.
This is such a disappointment and you have been manipulated by the Night Elf discord and thus have failed the warcraft 3 commmunity miserably.
Shame on the balance team for patch 2.0.3.
Thanks to Remodemoneo and elf discord for 0.5 seconds of visp during forest mining, 20 hp archs and 200 hp and mp bears. One big beautiful elf patch.
For some reason now, I start every single game completely zoomed in. I can’t zoom out, nothing works. Makes the game unplayable. I’ve tried reinstalling. Help!
They are elves. The balance team does not care about the game. They only care their lumbers and winning rates. Let’s quit so that the game is elves only.
The lumber gathering rate was reduced to 7.5, which should help reign in NE. That was the biggest issue. Gathering rate at 8 was too much, and gathering rate at 7 ate up at least 2 supply.
I think 7 is still better, but we’ll come back in a few months to revisit it if it’s as extreme as it was in 2.0.2.
Its already 40% Night Elves. It will get much worse with this patch
Thank you Blizzard for letting me win every game with Nightelf!
So, over the past month, and a couple of days ago as most recent, I’ve ran various analysis on data from W3Champions. And this is hard to make an exact science, it is not a law from physics. But like an artist making a painting of a chef prepping a meal; the result paints the same picture, each time it has the same flavour:
In 1.36.2 Elf was notably the strong (well over 100 MMR on W3C). Human was a tad to strong. Orc was a tad to weak. In 2.0.2, initially: elf got even stronger, undead got even worse (also lacked 100 MMR). I’ve established an organic base-line on the races and analysed the top of the ladder; and the skews in race presentation mimics the prior analysis. Recent analysis shows that elf was inflated insanely, but shrunk a bit: yet still near 60% ex ante winrate. Human got a foothold and increased in MMR. Undead regained some of its losses, but still is in a terrible, terrible position. Orc remains largly unchanged: a tad underwhelming.
I’m well aware this doesn’t analyse versus-matchup specifically. It doesn’t include maps involved. It does not differentiate between for example AM MK tier 3 play or Pala rifle tier 2 pushes. But, honestly for the love of god can’t argue, why on earth you’d buff elf.
I mean: the heavy armour change is weird. Could be good. Could be bad. It is to complex to theorize. But why on earth do archers get a buff to offset this; but HH, Fiends and Rifles are untouched? There isn’t even internal consistency in this patch. What on earth?
With lumber being reigned in a touch, the Archer change isn’t as bad. Archers were already made out of paper.
With the armor change and partial lumber revert, this patch is looking to change things for the better. It’s best to observe rather than predict right now IMO.
Night Elf still has more lumber than before last patch and they were already overperforming then. This isnt about seeing how it turns out and more about the insanity that night elf is still getting buffed. There is no logic or rationale for it. Given all the buffs it is high time that DH and Druids of the Claw get significant nerfs to be more in line with other races
They overnerfed lich frost nova from 800 range to 700. They sheepishly reverted this to 750 instead of 800. Now they do the same half assed revert on the lumber buff. It seems they have too much ego to revert changes as this would be seen as a admitting incompetence on their part.
I don’t see it as ego, more so taking stabs at things
Like, ego doesn’t even make sense here, there’s nothing to gain or lose by balance changes and the partial reverts have been good since the things that don’t get reverted outnumber them by a LOT, and have been pretty good for the game
If they make changes and then completely revert them 1-2 patches later then people will be upset because it shows a lack of foresight, and the community would have to deal with the incompetence of a poorly thought out change for a significant amount of time. By doing half reverts, they aim to save face: “look guys we didnt make a dumb unnecessary change, we just undershot it or overshot it”.
Some things clearly dont need to be changed, like the range of frost nova.
Everyone cries about coil-nova all day, but it is all UD has, and it is integral to the combo that both spells are 800 range. It was incredibly foolish nerf and they refuse to revert it because it would attract the scorn of the wider community. Now only UD players are upset.
Blizzard people are NE players…
I see no other reason why NE would get stronger stronger years after years.
I have to disagree here. A lot of changes are actually well thought out. Lumber was a good thing to target for NE vs. just adjusting numbers on units. Coil/Nova nerf was actually understandable, but it’s more about the sheer strength of healing abilities in the game vs. DK being that OP.
I say we should keep letting them cook and then giving feedback where it’s clearly wrong, like the lumber change. They do listen, reverting isn’t a bad thing, and considering all the variables Warcraft 3 has, it’s understandable to see them.
Each patch approaches a net positive and has for a while. When I look back at the history of the game and the metas that existed, we’re playing a version of Warcraft 3 that was better than even pre-Reforged in terms of unit variety.
We are giving them feedback where it is clearly wrong. Night Elf is massively overperforming and buffs to the race are not warranted. Definitely not compared to Undead or to some capacity Orc/Hu
No, you can’t think that way. They just completed two tasks, which were very effective 
what night elf buffs lol
Lumber generation was slowed, and the huntress changes were just to help NE deal with the peircing damage reduction (all other races have a heavy armor unit at T1 and NE doesn’t)
I mean cmon yes there’s some buffs too but “shame on the balance team?” balance is in a better spot than before the patch.
The buffs they got were targeted at units that weren’t popular to begin with. NE meta is Bears + Dryads. Archers and Hippo Archers getting a minor health buff may make some niche strategies a bit more viable, but it doesn’t really affect the meta.
Meanwhile they did get a small nerf to their lumber gathering rate, as well as their huntresses, who are now less effective at destroying enemy buildings, which are being repaired.
If you think that NE is in need of nerfs, just play the damn race. Look at Grubby - he keeps badmouthing NE, but it’s his weakest race. Or are you afraid of the realization that the race isn’t the problem, but you are?
The buffs they got were targeted at units that weren’t popular to begin with.
Yes, but actually… still yes. But it is more nuanced. We know for a fact that Elf is overpowered. And undead is severely overwhelming. I mean, we can critique every analysis in one way or an other, but every somewhat decent approach makes the compas point in the same direction.
This tells us nothing about specific matchups: e.g. undead may be bad overall, but still be good versus human.
So, we’d expect that at the bottom line: elf would receive nerfs and undead would receive buffs. Regardless of personal opinion: I think the concept that if A is too strong, and B is too weak: we’d expect A to get nerfs and B to get buffs.
But that is not what is happening. Instead, the nuance is sought and things that appear unpopular in A, get buffs. But that is an overall buff for A - it gives them more options, it buffs them as a whole. These “micro balances within race X” completely forget the bottom line, and thus, at this moment, amplify the bottom line.
There is no internal validity (e.g. buff archers to offset new damage vs heavy armour, but not do thsi for any other race), and there is little external validity: changes made don’t carry well over. It doesn’t inherently make the game more dynamic. I mean it might: but it further skews the overall balance.
That is the issue. It is fine to buff underused units. And nerf over used units. But that should be done while interacting and balancing other aspects to keep the bottom line in check. Currently it isn’t. Balance is horrible. I play random and versus someone with +50 mmr it is just pointless to play with my undead. My undead MMR is about 120 MMR lower than my average MMR on which my +50 mmr opponent was based. The win probability for me is just atrocious. Assuming no personal biases and preferences in race play to make the argument be able to extrapolated on the whole, not an anekdote.