With the recent Microsoft acquisition, I’m hopeful that Reforged can both improve its single player campaign the way it was advertised to be and on par with the fan-made Re-Reforged project, as well as improve its multiplayer with ladder restored. That being said, I think there’s a lot of room for improvement to multiplayer specifically to avoid stale gameplay over the same strategies (Human - Archmage. Orc - Far Seerer. Undead - Death Knight/Spiders/Destroyers. Night Elf - Demon Hunter/Bears). It’s stale because its the most viable right now for a powerful opening. I’m interested in shaking things up a bit. Here’s some ideas:
HUMAN:
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Townhall/Keep/Castle - Barricade: Can store any 4/8/12 ground units within. Units cannot attack while barricaded. (Adds a new defensive play that makes humans extremely durable, allowing them to preserve generally weakened or otherwise fragile units from the battlefield as long as the structure is standing)
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Farm - Barricade: Can store any 1 ground unit within. Unit cannot attack while barricaded
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Barracks - Adds Explosive Shot Upgrade for Rifleman (See below)
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Cannon Tower - Lower upgrade cost to 150 gold and 80 lumber. Lower damage to 75-99, from 90-111. Requirement only for Blacksmith + Keep/Castle now. (Cannon Towers aren’t used as much as they should be, I think in large part to the high cost and requirement for a workshop which is mid-late game anyway. By lowering both cost and requirement, I think we’ll see a lot more of these. To compensate, their overall damage is reduced.
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Peasant - Call to Arms: Milita is now kept with no timer when changed. They must return to a Townhall/Keep/Castle to return to Peasant status. Milita has a starting cooldown of 60 seconds at game start to prevent a rush. (There is two reasons I think this is useful. One: It is an incredibly over powered situation to simply wait until the milita get bored and drop their equipment to be peasants again and then expand early. This forces you to take unarmed peasants if you want to expand. Two: It allows milita to be a very strong attack force if you lets say have an abundance of peasants and want to use them in your attack wave. You no longer need to fear of them returning to peasants. Three: This prevents early tower rushes via milita speed boosts. Four: Why would Milita just drop their gear after a period of time? It just doesn’t make sense)
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Footman - Defend: Adds +3 armor in addition to current piercing/reflect effects. (This allows Footmen to withstand melee to melee attacks better since they are slowed down anyway)
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Rifleman - Explosive Shot (Castle Req): Gains a 25% chance on attack to deal +5 damage and mini-stun for 0.5 seconds. (Gains a new late game upgrade that not only improves riflemen damage, but gives them a chance to mini-stun, allowing them the ability to disrupt channeling units/heroes or just briefly impact any aggressive melee units incoming to them)
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Knights - Make Sundering Blade an upgrade again, but also give it bonus damage to Unarmored. This allows them to fight a bit better against spell casters and some Night Elf units
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Demo Squad - Demolition (Castle Req): Allows the demo squad to suicide into structures, dealing 500 damage and lower damage around in a small radius. (Giving this squad their demolition back from War2 I think can see Humans really plow throw structures in a new way. Although the suicide can be costly over time, it works well in certain clustered situations. The blast radius and damage is less than that of the Sapper, but not by much.
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Archmage Blizzard - Add a slowing cold effect to any units hit by the Blizzard wave (I think this will gain a lot more use over the Elemental if this is added). Increase mana cost to 90.
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Archmage Water Elemental - Slow movement speed down by 25% but gain a +2 HP regen/sec. This gives them more of their beefy tanky point rather than mobility which is short lived anyway
ORC:
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Great Hall/Stronghold/Fortress - Burrow: Can store 4/8/12 peons within that can attack for 22-28 damage, speed increase by 15% per peon (Adds a final solution to defensive attacking when either burrows are destroyed or you just need an extra attack point)
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Flame Tower (NEW) - The watch tower can be upgraded into this, which, will deal Very Fast 11-16 piercing damage in a small 300 range. This is meant to be highly effective against melee units, or those foolish enough to go near them. This gives Orcs a new tower option to use depending on situations
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Barracks - Adds the Rgae upgrade (See Below)
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Tauren Totem - Adds the Earthen Vitality upgrade (See Below)
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Grunt - Rage (Fortress Req): Gives Grunts a 40% attack speed increase but take 50% damage for 10 seconds. This, along with your berserker trolls, gives grunts late game viability especially if you want to utilize the often overlooked pillage skill.
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Catapult - Gains Spiked Barricade upgrades. This gives Catapults a defense against fast attacking melee units, if ever so slightly
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Tauren/Spirit - Earthen Vitality (Fortress Req): Gives Taurens a + 20% HP boost. As it stands 1300 for a heavy unit can be quite easily overpowered by focus ranged firing or heavy magic damage. Taurens should be the ultimate melee unit, but this often fails short
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Far Seer Summon Wolves - Increases duration of wolves by 20 seconds and damage by 2-4 each level, but increase their mana cost to 90 and cooldown by 20 seconds. Wolves are incredibly overpowered in early game, especially only 75 mana cost for a intelligence hero. However, by late game they are hardly useful with dispelles and just general focus fire. This change allows wolves to not be overused in early rushes but focus on micromanaging their life with the increased duration/cooldown and also gives them a stronger attack by Level 3 to do as much damage as posible before they are defeated.
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Chieftain Shockwave - Adds a 3 second duration 25% movement/attack slow. Increases mana cost back to 100. This change gives a much stronger use of shockwave for general mass slow that is often overlooked for the incredibly powerful stomp.
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Blademaster WindWalk - If an item is collected while invisible, you lose the invisibility. The purpose of this is self-evident such as when using an item you lose the invisibility.
Blademaster Bladestorm - Increases overall AoE by 100. This ultimate is often easily outrunned and is more often used against buildings, which is strange for a blade master. Increasing the area I think is more worth it to damage slower retreating units.
UNDEAD:
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Skeleton Mage - Two items to this. First, I’d like to see this actually be a mage in the sense that it has 50 mana in which to burn, siphon, whatever from the enemy. Two, it deals magic damage instead of piercing. I think Raise Dead should be primarily an anti-melee mass strategy, and changing this damage to Magic will deal much more against Heavy armor units, less so against flying units.
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Shade Chilling Presence (Black Citadel Req) - A new upgrade at the sacrificial pit where shades gain a small area offensive aura that slows down movement and attack speeds slightly. The aura can be turned on/off at will to avoid accidentally revealing its presence, but overall, it gains a subtle way the Undead can cripple enemy forces unseen.
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Death Knight - Death Coil rework. This would be a massive change in the general (and boring) undead strategy of overuse of the DK’s. Basically, it goes back to Warcraft 2 death coil mechanics. Still deals 100/200/300 damage to enemies, but restores whatever damage was done back to the hero. So if you deal 300 damage (or 250 if reduced), it heals you for that amount. If a victim only has 50 HP and you deal 250 damage, you only restore 50 HP. This changes DK’s from running around like idiots healing from behind to be more front-line and difficult to kill with constant self-healing. I feel overall Undead are too reliant on the DK, when they should use their other self-heal abilities like Cannabilize, Burrow, Stone Form, or use Obeslisks.
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Death Knight - Death Pact rework. Since we changed Death Coil to be the sole self-heal tool now, Death Pact instead turns the DK into a powerful general. By sacrificing 50/100/150 HP, when casted on a corpse, will revive that corpse to full HP and fight for the Undead. This basically gives the DK the ability to revive any dead minion. The purposes of this really is exciting and interesting.
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Death Knight - Remove Re-Animate Dead and Gain Death and Decay from Lich. I’ve often found the DK ultimate to be quite silly. Originally reviving any 6 dead units was powerful and they lasted a long time, but now they last hardly any time at all for the benefit of being invulnerable (except to dispells). It just doesn’t pack any sort of punch. Instead, give the DK his original War2 ability back from the Lich allowing this powerful hero to cause mass damage and if in trouble heal when needed.
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Lich - Remove Death and Decay (given to DK) and gain new Ultimate: Frozen Orb. Creates a magical orb that continually shoots frost shards in a cone around itself dealing damage and slowing movement/attack speeds. The orb can be destroyed. Lasts 20 seconds.
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Dread Lord Remove Carrion Swarm, replace with Confuse. In a targeted area, all enemy units affected will attack each other for a brief 3/5/7 second period. Heroes last 1/2/3 seconds. I feel like Carrion Swarm doesn’t really fit well with what the DL is supposed to be, which is an army manipulator and melee agresser.
NIGHT ELF:
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Ancient of War - Remove Sentinel Abil/replace with Luna Armor (see below)
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Ancient Guardian (New Bld) - Upgraded from Ancient Protector. These guys can only attack ground units, but launches subterreanean tendrils to impale units, dealing damage on par with Cannon Towers from humans, but piercing, but in a small area around initial target. This new tower option will really help against the general low armor towers Night Elf suffers from, at least from melee units.
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Huntress Sentinel - No longer an upgrade, gets initially. I think this will help see more early protection against invisible attacks as well as since this is no longer lasting forever, a mandatory and useful ability that should just be given.
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Huntress Luna Armor (3rd Tier) - Huntress’s gain +5 armor and increased HP regeneration at night. This will allow Huntress’s to have some late game viability, especially if you use them for hit and run tactics so they can regenerate any lost HP.
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Fairy Dragon - Increase Mana Flare cap from 90 damage (3 damage per point of mana) to 140 damage. As it stands, I’ve seen mana flare just do poor damage when enemy spell casters cast their spells to the point that their purpose becomes obsolete. This should really be a much more powerful answer to mass spell casters that a damage increase will help with.
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Demon Hunter - Immolation. Reduce mana drain from 7/sec to 5/sec. As it stands, immolation is a massive mana drain that I think puts players off when compared to the insanely more useful mana burn spell. I think slightly helping this will allow the DH to retain immolation more and see more use. An alternate suggestion could be to start Immolation at 20 damage/sec, but have the mana drain by very high at Level 1 (15/sec) then 11/sec, then 7/sec, whereby at Level3 the DH should have the mana to support a 7/sec drain.
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Keeper of the Grove Thorns Aura - This is in need of a much more powerful boost. The paltry 10/20/30% damage return is not enough to make this viable in any shape or form. Instead, it should deal 2/4/6 base damage + 15/30/45% damage return, allowing much more useful protection against lower tier melee units and somewhat better against the big boys
NAGA:
I would also LOVE to see Naga be a playable multiplayer race, with some obvious tweaks. Here’s my suggestions, extremely rough, but you get the idea:
Race Uniqueness:
- Water - All buildings must be built on water (shallow enough where any ground unit can walk on). Most ground units can submerge under the water to remain hidden unless detected.
- Summons - They have the ability to summon the most diverse units, making anti summoning/dispel abilities a must
- Poisons. They have access to the most deadly poison abilities and reducing stats
- High health regeneration capabilities
Buildings:
- Temple of Tides. Returning point for resources, researches Submerge and trains Mur’gul Slave and Mur’gul Reaver. Can be Upgraded to Temple of Seas and Temple of Oceans. Reavers can learn Rend.
- Coral Bed. provides food and generates water around itself. Only Coral Beds can generate water in which all structures, including the Temple of Tides, can be built. (Hence to expand, you need a Coral Bed first, then the Temple of Tides.).
- Flooded Gold Mine. any Mur’gul slave can flood the gold mine, which is built like the Haunted Gold mine is summoned. Once flooded, then the mur’gul slaves can harvest from it. Slaves can also hide in the gold mine, maximum of 10. Giving them immunity during attacks. If the Flooded Gold mine is destroyed, they all obviously vacate
- Altar of the Depths (Trains/Revives Heroes)
- Sunken Vault (Item Shop). Items include: Tier 1: Lesser Replenishment Scroll (100 health, 50 mana over time), Lesser Clarity Potion, Wand of Negation (dispells effects/summons 3 charges). Tier 2: Health Potion, Mana Potion, Town Portal Tier 3: Orb of Frost, Neclace of Spell Immunity
- Tidal Guardian (Ground/Air Tower). Can be upgraded to Hydra Guardian - Fires three attacks at once.
- Spawning Grounds Trains Naga Myrmidons, Dragon Turtles, and Snap Dragons. Myrmidons can learn Weed Netting (Tier 2). Dragon Turtles come with Devour and can learn Hardened Shell (Tier 2). Snap Dragons can learn Withering Poison (Tier 2)
- Ancient Cove (Provides Attack/Armor Upgrades and a lumber drop off point. All units can benefit from attack/armor upgrades, but are more costly than the other races at all tiers)
- Shrine of Azshara. Trains Sirens, Couatls and Summoners. Contains Adept/Master training for Sirens/Summoners, and Devouring Acid for Couatls.
- Underwater Cavern. Trains Hydras, Anglers, and Octoguards. Contains upgrades for these guys, unsure what yet
- Leviathan’s Lair - Trains Leviathans. Leviathans can learn Entanglement, which wraps around an enemy air unit dealing 20 damage per second until cancelled or dead. The Leviathan gains +20 armor however while wrapped.
Units:
- Mur’gul Slave (Worker) - Typical worker. Although they act like Peasants and Peons in the sense of mining gold/lumber, they need to flood a gold mine first and can actually hide in the structure if needed.
- Mur’gul Reaver (Low Melee) - Although its considered the low melee unit, it can be deadly if it keeps attacking the same unit over and over with the rend passive learned, which deals +1 damage per attack on the same unit within a 5 second period.
- Naga Myrmidon (Medium Melee) - A unique Tier 2 melee unit that other races don’t really have, they are quite powerful early/mid game, but need support late game as they can’t stand toe to toe against other races Tier 3 melee units without backup. Their netting doesn’t last as long as Ensnare or Webs, but they can cast in an area, which can net more units at once.
- Dragon Turtle (Heavy Range Siege Attacker) - Unlike other races, the Dragon Turtle is a powerful and non-fragile unit that deals ranged siege damage. It can be upgraded to be even more adept at withstanding damage and magic attacks. These guys are very costly however.
- Snap Dragon (Medium Range Attacker) - The idea here is to pair a snap dragon with a unit to maximize the effectiveness of their upgraded poison that reduces the damage and armor of the single victim its attacking. So micro is key here, otherwise they are more fragile then other typical range attackers.
- Naga Siren (Spellcaster) - Sirens come with Parasite, which deals damage per second and if killed, spawns watery minion, and can learn negating energy which bounces unit to unit negating statuses and dealing damage to summoned units, less damage to summoned units per bounce), and learn Lure, which causes them to channel sing for 20 seconds. Any enemy nearby has a 20% per second to become enthralled and fight for the enemy for 2 seconds.
- Couatls (Medium Air Attacker). Couatls are a Tier 2 air unit like Wyverns, and can learn Devouring Acid, which deals more damage per second each subsequent attack, up to 20 damage per second. Starts at 2 damage per second, +2 per attack) This is more or less like rend, except they have a cap on the damage per second.
- Leviathan (Heavy Air Attacker). This tier 3 unit is just as tough as the others and can attack land/air, but has a unique ability to wrap around another air unit to not only deal moderate damage but gain a huge armor boost to survive attacks. The wrap damage is not enough to use this over a regular attack however, so its only useful as a survival mechanism if overwhelmed or to stop an attacking/retreating air unit.
- Naga Summoner (Spellcaster). This unique unit can help overwhelm an enemy with summons. They start with summoning two sea crabs, which are only a tad stronger than watery minions. Tier 2 summons a corrosive sludge, which is an immobile jellyfish like thing that if passed over via a ground unit explodes and deals heavy (20/sec, 5 secs) poison damage to all, and Sea Elemental, which are like the Level 1 Archmage water elementals, but can suicide itself to restore life to nearby allies depending how much current health it has.
- Hydra (Defensive Support) - Can heal up to 3 units at once, if killed will split into 3 lesser hydras with timed life that can’t heal but can deal light range damage.
- Anglers (Offensive Support) - Stuns by throwing a lure like tendril to anything that steps on it. Probably channeling.
- Octoguard (Heavy Melee) - This powerful heavy melee unit can attack multiple units at once, however, each unit its attacking reduces the overall damage. So you can either deal light damage to 8 units or heavy damage to 1 unit, likely via a toggle.
- Watery Minon (Summoned via Siren’s parasite). Very light melee attacker. Only useful in high numbers.
- Sea Crab (Summoned via Summoner) Light melee attackers, nothing special other than to overwhlem with watery minions.
- Corrosive Sludge (Summoned via Summoner) A mine so to speak that if a ground unit goes near will explode and deal heavy poison damage per second.
- Sea Elemental (Summoned via Summoner). Similar to the Archmage’s water elemental, but can suicide to heal units around itself
Heroes (I’m not going into heavy ability depth):
- Sea Witch (INT) - Yes this means she’s gone from the Tavern to be replaced with something else, maybe a high elf Ranger with cold arrows, who knows)
- Royal Guard (AGI) - Leader of the Myrmidons, its primary use will be to sprint towards enemies and stun/ensnare them. Sort of like a Mountain King that’s not as high in health but faster.
- Tiamat (STR) - Summons perhaps lesser sea serpents of herself, but overall is in the damage per second category.
- Krakken (STR) - The tank. Able to withstand damage and deal damage to multiple foes at once.