Piercing Damage Is Overpowered, and Should be Nerfed

General Discussion
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For starters, look at the chart of Warcraft 3’s current armor and attack types, such as the one on the Warcraft 3 Liquipedia. Of the four armor classes that the vast majority of melee units have, piercing does bonus damage to 2 of the types, full damage to heavy armor, and 75% damage to medium armor. Piercing damage does reduced damage to fortified and heroic armor, but it doesn’t matter much. Fortified armor isn’t used by units, which means that you don’t need to attack it in order to effectively win the game. Piercing damage doing reduced damage to heroes is the one thing that keeps it from being completed busted, but it isn’t enough to stop ranged units from being extremely popular. Players with lots of piercing damage focus the enemy player units, kill them all, and then finish the heroes. The first player will also utilize their own heroes to kill the opposing heroes.

Now consider that most of the good fighting units with medium armor, such as Rifleman or Headhunters, happen to have piercing damage. There are utility units such as Spellbreakers and Raiders, that have medium armor and a different damage type, but because they’re are utility units, valued for their abilities, their raw stats aren’t good enough to compete with the rest of the units with medium armor. The result, if you want to fight an opponent spamming ranged units, you’re best option is usually to go with ranged units of your own. In order to lessen the overpopularity of ranged units, piercing damage needs to have a weakness that a different type of unit can exploit.

I believe piercing damage should deal 75% to heavy armor, instead of full damage. This makes piercing damage, used by the most popular units in the game, weak to heavy armor, which I believe is the weakest in the game. In the late game, this would lessen the effectiveness of ranged units, and make melee units a stronger answer to ranged units.

Tweaks will have to made to certain units with heavy armor so they don’t become oppressive. Towers typically have piercing damage and heavy armor, and with this change they would feel tankier because they’ll take reduced damage from piercing attacks. On the plus side, they will deal reduced damage to melee units, meaning they deal slightly less damage. Still, I think towers would need their hitpoints reduced by 20%. There might be other units that need tweaks, but Blizzard should make those decisions once they have a PTR up. In the long run, I believe this change would lead to more diverse armies in the meta and allow for more counterplay to ranged armies.

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The damage values of piercing type attacks are set with the understanding of what armor types they are effective against. It’s one piece of the entire system of different damage and armor types.

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I agree with CaptainJack on this one. If any unit with pierce damage is too powerful, it wouldn’t be hard to adjust its damage, attack cooldown, etc. I’m not sure you can really argue that pierce damage itself is the problem.

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It would be simpler to adjust piercing damage imo. When you compare raw stats of ranged units to other units, you can see that they’re not particularly strong. In fact, by late game, their stats per supply are strictly worse than most T3 units. If you reduce their stats, such as damage output, then they wouldn’t be able to effectively counter air units. I think it’s simpler that they have an armor type that they’re not good against, like heavy.

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as others allude to the problem is not piercing damage per se, but the units themselves. In particular, the rifleman unit is the big offender here. Highest dps unit for its cost and on top of it all it has 50 more range than the other staple ranged units. Disgustingly broken unit which needs a big nerf, i agree whole heartedly.

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After upgrading. Its range is actually crap before upgrading. The problem is this is balanced by the rest of Human’s earlier game options being crap. Any nerf to rifles needs to be accompanied by improving something else.

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remarkably dimwitted commentary. The early game range doesnt matter since the rifles are used to creep and or are spawned later when the upgrade is already acquired/ on the way. The unit has 600 range, is cheap, is enhanced into a tier 4 unit with pala by its side.

Want to know something funny? its always talked about how orb of corruption is so broken etc. But guess what, the 20% damage increase from orb just about evens about the dps of a fiend and a riflemen. Aka a rifleman spawns with the orb of corrpution effeect for free.

So lets summarize. Cheap 600 range unit with orb of corruption levels of attack damage with huge synergy with hu heroes. Seems balanced. its the highest dps unit of all units for a reason and its a ranged unit lmao. so funny

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Making snide remarks does not enhance your arguments. Needing to upgrade something does matter, and their short range can in fact be quite annoying when creeping as if you have more than a few you often have to shove them closer to the creeps to let them all into attack range; and the upgrade is at the barracks which means you can’t produce units from that barracks while upgrading. And all human units are equally enhanced by having a Pala, as a universally useful hero. Rifles don’t gain more from it than any other unit, beyond having enough HP to to benefit more from the fully leveled heal compared to footmen, the only other combat unit you have before T2/3.

As for fiends, they do have less damage but they also have their own abilities that make it easy to preserve them, alongside undead’s death knight which does the same darn thing Pally does. While technically less threatening and having a larger hitbox, fiend has useful abilties the rifles don’t have.

Well yeah, it does have it for a reason. Because Rifles are a basic, pure DPS unit with nothing that makes them special other than their damage.

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W

Truth is not a snide remark.

excuse me? You have to walk 1 cm closer while you have to creep? oh my im sorry you had to go through with that. I didnt know riflemen suffered like this. This makes them balanced unit for sure.

what are you talking about? the burrow upgrade which is countered by a single item? or the web upgrade costing 200 resources to let them have a chance at attacking air? Did you know that riflemen spawn with the ability to attack air? Did you know that they hard counter any air unit? Fun fact: they hard counter t3 melee units too. Seems fair, right?

hmm nothing special except exceptional range, damage, and low cost? i cant quite put my finger on it but this seems like a overtuned unit hmm. Nothing special here about this unit which is why it is massed in every human game bar none.

Do you want to know why this unit is massed? It is not the fact that other human units are bad, on the contrary, human units are generally strong. The reason we see nothing but rifles all game every game is that the unit is overtuned. You said so yourself, after all.

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Which part was true to you? That what you read was “remarkably dimwitted commentary”?

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  1. it’s not the truth.
  2. Snide is a form of rude tone, and is not dependent on whether you think something is “truth” or not (which it isn’t).

Your snark and sarcasm only further underscores what a weak argument (more like nonexistent) you have.

Their range isn’t “exceptional.” It’s better than other T1 units after upgrade, but before that it’s terrible. “exceptional” range is something like mortars/ballistae/catapult/wagon. Also, while they can’t get it as quickly, archers have better range than rifles post-upgrade.
Rifle pre-upgrade: 400 range
Rifle post upgrade: 600 range
Troll HH: 550 range
Fiends: 550 range
Archers pre-upgrade: 500 range
Archers post-upgrade: 700 range

Costs
Riflemen- 205g 30 lumber 3 food.
Upgrade: Range
Headhunters- 140g 20 lumber 2 food (Overall equal lumber cost, slightly more gold based on food).
Upgrades:: Beserker mode and regeneration
Fiends: 215g 40 wood 3 food
Upgrades: Burrow and Web
Archers: 130g 10 wood 2 food
Upgrades: marksmanship (extra damage upgrade) and improved bows (range)

On a per-food basis, Rifles are the cheapest, yes. But as I said before, Rifles start as just a straight up ranged DPS unit with no special attributes (cost is not a special attribute, their range isn’t even the highest among ranged land units, and damage isn’t a special attribute). All the other core ranged land units have abilities that give them more utility while rifles remain a basic, boring damage unit. Headhunters gain a lot more than rifles do from their respective races’ caster support.

As you get into the late game, rifles lose a lot of the power that they admittedly do possess in the early game, while the other race’s main ranged units all have special abilities that keep them relevant.

If what you were saying were true and humans are just universally strong and rifles are simply above that, then why has Human had a losing record vs 2 of the 3 other races at the pro level for years?

The balance between the different race’s main ranged unit is far better than your comments would have people believe. I’m not saying rifles are bad by any stretch, they definitely have an early advantage, particularly with pally support. But the other races claw that advantage back pretty quickly from tier 2 onwards, so honestly, the longer a game takes, the less likely Human is to win if relying on rifles. Human is basically obligated to win in the early game or else.

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I saw someone claim that Rifleman have the highest dps per cost in the game, but this is false. I have an excerpt of a chart that I made from Liquipedia stats that I’ll post here.

Unit Name			Supply	DPS		DPS/Supply	HP		EHP/Supply
Berserker			2	   10.82	5.41		475		238
Rifleman			3	   15.56	5.19		535		178
Crypt Fiend			3	   14.25	4.75		550		183
Archer				2	   11.33(14)5.67(7)		255		127.5
Bear		        4	   23.67	5.92		960		283
Destroyer			5      14.81(25.92)2.96(5.19)850	201
Abomination 		4	   20		 5		    1080	329
Knight				4	   24.29	6.07		885(985)288(320)
Grunt				3	   12.19(14.06)4.06(4.69)700(825)247(292)

The meta ranged unit(I don’t feel Archers are regularly massed) with the highest DPS/Supply in this chart are Berserker(their dps is the exact same as Headhunters when they don’t have Berserk active). But also notice how a lot of units have better or similar dps/supply than any of the ranged units. This is the case for Bears, Knights, and Destroyers.

And there are other units in the game, such as Abominations and Grunts that don’t have as much DPS/Supply as ranged units, but make up for it by having dramatically higher EHP/Supply. This stat shows how tanky a unit is, and is definitely a factor in how well it trades.

I want other good units in the game, such as Knights and Grunts to be able to counter mass ranged units. By providing counterplay to ranged units, it could also allow more flying units to be played as well.

To the person who mentioned how Crypt Fiends suck in comparison with Rifles; I agree with you. The numbers on my chart show clearly that Rifleman are the better combat unit. However, I want a meta where people don’t feel the need to compare ranged units from their race to another race. Ideally, each race should have strengths and weaknesses, and it shouldn’t be necessary for all ranged units to be equivalent to each other. Ideally if your opponents race has a combat unit that they’re spamming, you should be able to counter it with units that match favorably against them. I think this would make for better gameplay and more diverse armies.

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This is good information, but it does leave out the impact of armor on DPS, as how effective each of these units are depends on who the opponent is.

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I forgot to address this point.
Burrow- I’m not sure which item you’re referring to, presumably something to reveal invisible units, but items that can do this are not always readily available and many players don’t give a lot of thought to invisibility detection as it just isn’t a huge part of the game right now. Most people probably aren’t going to go to the goblin shop to buy it until they encounter undead using fiends and seeing those fiends burrow. So most of the time, it’s going to give them an advantage for at least some period of time.

Web- You seem to be forgetting that web isn’t just about letting the Fiend attack the air unit, it’s about letting EVERYTHING attack it. It’s a useful ability even if you aren’t heavily relying on fiends.

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I agree Piercing damage should just have a conceptual weakness against Heavy armor. This isn’t a case of single overperforming units, it’s a fundamental imbalance in the dynamic between melee physical and ranged physical attackers.

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The problem with ranged units, is that they don’t have an effective counter. Magic units, especially the flying unit that Human, Undead, and Night Elf have at T3, will quickly kill melee units with heavy armor. Ranged units, like Rifleman, Cryptfiends and Berserkers deal 150% damage to casters and 200% magic flying units, while also taking reduced damage from them.

Melee units, such as Grunts, Knights and Abominations deal 150% damage to all units with medium armor while still taking full damage from piercing damage. What’s more, they have trouble skirmishing with ranged units and focus firing targets is very difficult. In practice, I feel that melee units DON’T signifcantly counter ranged units, and I feel this should be apparent to anyone with 100 games in WC3. You can also consider comparisons, do melee units counter ranged units as effectively as ranged units counter air? As effectively as magic units counter melee units?

This discrepancy can be rectified by modifying how damage and armor types interact. If piercing dealt 75% damage to heavy armor, instead of 100% it might allow melee units to effectively counter ranged units.

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I mean, that’s what they’re designed to do. The problem here isn’t one of balance, it’s one of people relying too much one one unit as the backbone of their force, when a combination to cover all threats is more prudent. It’s a delicate thing too, there’s a fine line to walk where, below that line, ranged will be useless, and above that line, they’ll be too strong. There’s not a lot of leeway. If you make them easier to kill, they won’t be able to fill the roles they were meant to. if their damage is too low, same thing. Melee units are there to keep the enemy from getting to your ranged units, and to kill theirs when the window opens. etc. etc.

The armor system was designed to create more leeway, by pigeonholing units more into their intended roles by making them less effective against things they weren’t meant to be good against. It’s the heavy melee who have a less clear role. Footies for example, already have Defend and can use it to take way less damage from ranged, so they don’t really need to be made tougher against them. It’s mainly knights, tauren, abominations that need help. Tweaking heavy armor isn’t too far off, but again, I’d be concerned about certain earlier game units being too good.

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The early game units with heavy armor that would be too good could be nerfed, however, the only examples I can think of are Feral Spirits, Treants, Carrion Beetles, Orc and Human towers. I don’t think Grunts, Footmen or Ghouls would be too threatening early on if they took reduced damage from piercing. Water elementals would be tankier, but they would deal significantly less damage to units with heavy armor leaving them with a similar power level.

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Well let’s talk about the potential knock-on effects. We tend to talk about PvP unit matchups, but a very notable consequence of this change would be that Piercing based armies creep slower, which is a very generalized nerf. Currently Piercing does 100% to Heavy and 75% to Medium, meaning you would put your Piercing units to attack Heavy over Medium, and now they would just do less damage and unless the camp happens to have Unarmored units to target fire there’s simply nothing you can do about losing damage. This is basically inescapable at all parts of creeping. Especially Night Elf with their basic unit being an Archer would stand to be affected by this in every game, so perhaps the change can be paired with a buff to Archers, but this would generally reduce the tempo of builds of mass Riflemen, Headhunters, Wind Riders and Crypt Fiends as well. That’s not necessarily a bad effect per se; it could just end up incentivizing further diversifying the army to creep faster.

Another thing that comes to mind is that Burrows suddenly deal worse with harassing light melee units, making orc bases a lot more attackable. The Water Elemental vs Burrow matchup just has both sides doing less damage to one another which I’m not entirely sure who that favors, but if Burrows end up suffering, maybe they can just also get a damage buff to offset the change. Since they’re static defense the risk of making them too powerful in the process feels slim to nil.

I also do want to say I think 75% is a bit extreme. I’d been thinking about this change on and off using 80% instead as the value, and that is already pretty extreme. Perhaps 85% would be a more conservative and risk-averse sweet spot.

(Also this is tangential but to me kinda the bigger weirdness of the balance ranged units is that Medium armor only takes 50% from Siege. IMO this is a bit of a relic of being afraid of OP catapults and upping this to 100% would not at all break the game and in fact just give Siege more of a niche in actual combat, they’re already generally extremely brittle units that mostly just bust buildings or occasionally caster lines. It’d make Raiders much better units against ranged armies though so that’s something to consider)

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Hunts change to heavy after getting the glaive upgrade iirc. ofc thats not until t2