These changes are 1) WAY too drastic 2) FAVOR human 3) ONLY focus on 1v1 without any consideration for the other modes of play 4) LIMIT play styles
My first thought when seeing the patch notes is why so heavy handed with the changes? The races are already delicately balanced. Wouldn’t small incremental changes make much more sense from a game balance perspective?
HUMAN
Why are you favoring human so much over the other races? Human is already VERY powerful. The world championship this summer was a human mirror match!!! Why are you making it nearly impossible to stop human fast expand and harass by buffing arcane towers and nerfing summons even more?
Also, please take a look at mass teleporting tanks which is a very broken strategy in FFA and needs your attention.
ORC
Tauren Chieftan lvl 3 stomp probably does need a nerf but not lvl 1 stomp. 2/2.5/3 seems like a change that actually makes sense. How often do we see Chieftan first hero except for FFA? That’s just so he can push to 5 and lvl 3 stomp.
UNDEAD
The DK needs a nerf but why only lvl 2 unholy aura? Wouldn’t a change like 10/17.5/25 make more sense? Or perhaps even 10/15/20, but buff other parts of the undead army to open up more build possibilities for undead. DK is very powerful in FFA and team games as well as 1v1. Right now undead depend on the crutch of DK/Lich nuke kite strategy to be competitive in matches.
Having the burrow upgrade apply to beetles as well is great. I love it. But now that you’re implementing this and buffing arcane towers can you please give the beetles some of their health back so they don’t die so easily to dispel in the mid to late game? You successfully nerfed the Crypt Lord back into oblivion and out of competitive play, which is the last thing you should be doing. The undead are right back to one competitive strategy and only one strategy.
Undead have been begging for a change to gargoyles since release when it comes to targeting priority. Gargs are crippled in large FFA battles with their preference for ground targeting. Please fix this! Their primary attack is air to air!
Spirit towers are much more costly and take longer to build and upgrade than towers for any other race and they have fewer workers available for repair. Undead towers are already much weaker than their counterparts due to the larger surface area. Undead towers get absolutely shredded by tanks already. There is a reason the original designers made them faster to repair. This nerf isn’t needed at all.
NIGHT ELF
Wisps are powerful but cutting their mana reduction in half seems very drastic. Why not start out with 25% and see how that goes? This is going to crush NE versus human mass caster. It takes a lot of skill to bring the wisps in on the flank and detonate them on casters. Skill should be rewarded, not punished.
Chims don’t need a buff. They are already the most powerful build in large team and FFA games. It’s understandable you’d like to see them more in 1v1, but buffing them like this is not the answer to that problem. Reducing the build time and cost of their building or delinking it from ancient of wind seems like a better solution. The unique nature of the different units is what gives the game character.
Once again, it just seems like whoever is making these changes is 1) WAY too drastic 2) REALLY loves human 3) is ONLY focusing on 1v1 without any consideration for the other modes of play and 4) is LIMITING the meta not expanding it.