PTR Patch Notes -- Version 1.32.10 -- Updated March 16

PTR Discussion and Bug Report
65

@Kaivax

I think there is a lot of potential improvement being lost because Blizzard is not working together with it’s community.

W3champions has all the data you guys need to analyze the MU’s and find gaps to be patched, you can get the statistics from 1800-2100 mmr games to get a good picture of the game meta (higher mmr will bring in the outliers and lower might bring in players that have less understanding of the game and it’s mechanics).

If you want to test the patch on a PTR and get feedback from the community know that no one will play on battle.net, because the servers are too laggy and provide bad game experience. If you and Blizzard want to be succeful at this you should contact W3champions and/or Netease, i am pretty sure they are willing to help and would launch the new patch on their own PTR’s, and could probably come up with features to incentive players to test it (like exclusive icons for helping the community, etc)

Balance wise i think the HU buffs will not fix the current Hu vs UD issue, and will probably buff Hu too much vs Elf, creating a new problem in the meta game.

Cryptlord impale Stun Hero duration reduced from 1/2/3 to 1/1.5/2, and Cryptlord damage reduced from 75/120/165 to 60/110/150.

Don’t forget here there is a 1 second air duration stun where units can take physical damage, and don’t take other race Hero stun durations as reference because none of them have the nuke an Undead army has (Spell wise or Normal attack wise). The main problem here is that impale range and cone is too big, it stuns whole army and 2+ heroes every time, so there is no way to save Human heroes with Invisibilty, staff, a Scroll of Healing etc like we can vs Stomp and Thunderbolt for example. Also the stun duration on normal units is ridiculous (2 / 3 / 4 s + 1 s air stun), we can’t fight late game if our army is half the time totaly disabled.

Another huge issue in Hu vs UD matchup is Anti Magic Shell from Banshee’s, i am pretty sure they should receive the following buff and nerf:

Buff: Add auto cast to Anti Magic Shell, i think this can help UD in some situations, and it is an improvement of game play
Nerf: Currently there is no counter play to this spell, so something must be done, here are some possibilities: (1) Make them dispellable, or (2) reduce the damage absorbed, or (3) reduce the duration (hard to avoid UD when he wants to fight though), or (4) increase mana requeriment.

Obs: In my opinion Anti Magic Shell should be used in plays like denying a Thunderbolt or Holy Light, and not making Undead whole army immune to Gryphons, Blizzard, Thunderbolt, Holy Light, and Thunder Clap damage, all at the same time…

Really hope you guys start working together with W3champions and the community, i think that would save Blizzard a huge amount of money and time, and make this game way greater as it deserves

66
  1. Human mass towers, fast expo and fast tech can do at the same time, no jokes good job blizzard.
  2. Nerf MG please, this unit is broken.
  3. BM + 2 agility. Hey I cannot see any orc mirror with BM first anymore. Everyone goes FS and TC vs Human/Orc/UD.
67

Will you guys ever add more servers around the world? E.g like an oceanic server? From what I understand there is only 3 server locations total which is a downgrade from the 4-5 global servers WC3 had years ago. Also not having an oceanic server is a big disappointment considering your other games have them and custom maps specifically benefit greatly from lower ping games due to the completely different gameplay style you can find in custom games - honestly 250-300ms is a horrible experience and makes some custom maps just completely unplayable.

Or add the ability to self host back into the game for custom maps specifically so we can solve this problem ourselves…

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68

wow Blizzard really hates night elves, from BFA to WC3

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69

Thorzain and Starshaped discuss the changes in depth

70

nice to see you guys are alive!
please stay healthy

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72

mybe ToD make em to change it lol xD

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73

Nice to see another patch from you but it is not what I was looking for or expecting. Im a high lvl EU undead player and want to give overall feedback about changes and what I think should be fixed in the first place.

Hu vs UD

The biggest problem of this match up was the wood economy of human. You finally noticed it and made some changes but at the same time you buffed human late game even more. Human already has a stronger late game than UD. Problem for them was getting to it without getting snowballed by UD who harrased very well or delayed human economy. If the game is 50-50, human is always better in late game. Their army composition is more balanced and when you see highest lvl of ud vs hu, undeads in this scenario tend to go all in on heroes because its impossible to win a straight fight vs even army/heroes of HU. You should nerf human late game if your buffing their early game not mentioning tower repair buff that will affect other match ups (tower rushes at t1 and t2).

UD changes

I still think that the rod nerfed you introduced last patch is outrageous. It destroyed every timing of creep route in every match up for UD and still will. This has to be reverted. Just look how it affected UD meta. People dont go DK first that often, because creeping is harder and slower right now. This item was in a very good place and I dont know why you nerfed it in a first place. If the reason was peasant harras, buffing their HP was enough! The thing that should have been adressed was reseting CD of rod when it was swapped to another hero allowing to cast multiple skeletons at the same time!

Finally making tech changes to frost wyrms but still I think that undead tech buildings cost too much wood. Getting frost wyrms especially on 1 base is still problematic because of how expensive the building is! Sacrificial pit should cost less wood or maybe figure out something else to make shade available. Its extremly usefull but people skip is because of 150 wood they need to spend on it.

CL nerf was needed. Impale didnt need any dmg buff like you did before. We only wanted it not to be bugged like it was. Its still a 100 mana spell which is very expensive but it cant stun for a long time and deal lot of dmg (either stun or dmg cant do both on very good level) but you need to buff something else. Armor talent is still useless.

Lich frost armor nerf I dont like. It is the only counter spell to hex/ensnare/early hero nuke of ORC with speed scroll. Not to mention endurance aura has bigger movement speed buff than unholy aura while UD vs ORC is all about hit n run (now not very efficient).

There are still several nerfs missing of skills that I think are too strong. My opinion is that spells should work as risk/reward mechanic. Like in order to get a good stomp you need to go deep into enemy army but you end up taking lots of dmg or risk losing a hero if enemy nukes him. Another example is DK coil where you need to come close to deny a creep while enemy can counter play by attacking your hero and keeping him out of range or trying to surround. There are counterplays but if you look at HEX or ENTANGLE. There is 0 counter play. Especially entangle is too good spell. It basicly “stuns” a unit (cant move or attack) and deals a lot of dmg. Lvl 2 entangle can kill a ghoul on blight (0 risk, HUGE REWARD). Hex on the other hands is not only a great CC spell but also DENIES experience. Even when there are 2 heroes arround, a HEXed hero (that doesnt get any experience) still is treated as a potential hero that gains experience and denies it for another resulting in second hero getting only 50% while the first one gets ZERO (ITS INSANE). Spells have to be treated as risk/reward. Impale is very expensive and you try to time it as good as possible without spaming. Or with DK, you try not to take too much dmg. Mana burns have to be adressed too. Mana is one of the most important resource in the game and DH or BM can burn tons of mana without much of a risk.

Overall I think there are bigger issues with the game than the balance changes your trying to do for each of the races. Map mechanics and item economy are the biggest issues of the game right now. Things like lighting shield creeping that allows to creep harder camps very fast (look how efficent elfs are doing it with AOW creepinig). Creep pulling that makes golems or other units stop using their abilities or spells. Another thing is the range you can pull the creep and surround it in a safe spot resulting in other units not protecting the key creep. Critter placement/lack of them or random movement that denies early corpses for UD resulting in not beeing able to creep with skeletons. I wont even go into details with items because its just a huge topic. Those fundemntals should be adressed first before we can even start balancing races.

Thank you for reading. Will make video about it too.

4 Likes
75

Resident sleep, call me when you guys install better dedicated servers.

You know w3C has 16 granted only for melee, while you have 3 right ? i’m starting to feel like this issue won’t be solved.
ever.

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76

Any info on ballista nad steam tank models?

77

More Human buffs!? And not a single change to Orc? Is Orc the perfect race now? :wink: Sure doesn’t feel like it.

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78

No, not all items. And no, it shouldn’t.

79

What about the desync bug? Its just impossible to play most custom games online. Every time we stary to play one of the players get desync ed. This is an old and well known bug, please fix this.

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80

i think tauren need pulverize from the start too

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81

Just watched that video lol

82
  • Improved Lumber tech requirement removed.

Does that mean it can be upgraded on tier one? I don’t think that’s the right choice. Because you would just need like 6 workers to do the work of 8-10 now on tier one. Even to a human, this sounds too OP to me because I feel like that I can get significantly more footman instead of balancing my army and econ on 36 supply, right after the expansion. This is way too imba and over-buffed.

I believe that every fast expansion tactic should be punished. Because it’s very often that certain races just are better at expanding than others. I think you should encourage a tier two expansion on humans rather than a tier-one expansion. Because if forces people(the other side) to scout more and they also can punish an expansion better on tier two with a larger army.

I don’t think human is weak against UD when they play tier-one expansion. If they play 36-supply expand they don’t really get the gold-wood dilemma you are concerned about. Human with expansion can be harassed and punished by elf in the first night(at least that’s what happens to me, not sure about higher players), but can hold the expansion, despite some experience to the DH or whatever the hero.

The knight buff is also too OP, the tower buff might encourage early tower rush tactics, and should thus be reconsidered. Priest dispel range buff is very desirable for human players, I personally would like it, I don’t know how the other races will feel about it.

Frost Armor is over-nerfed in numbers. Basically the debuff just keep melee unit away from the first unit after the first hit. So they either can chase it up or they can’t . There’s a threshold for it, and there’s really no some magical numbers in the middle. If they can chase it, they usually can kill it; if they can’t they have to focus fire on the other target(or use some control), that’s it. Playing with this duration time will only do nothing or overnerf the army that’s using it. Also, usually lich only get level 1 frost armor before lv6.

If you really really want to buff human.I would suggest buff human tier two expansion. Because it takes an expansion to support human on tier three(I’m sure other races will disagree, but strong as human tier three armies are, you’ll have to buy a lot of consumeable or nonconsumeable items and researched a lot to get there). I would say just move advanced lumber tech to tier two. So that human can spend 300 gold on tier two to get a really good wood income. They can really have 5*2+6workers on tier two and quickly gain resources and move to tier three.

It’s still very controversial is humans are already imba. After all, there is no really a perfect race in wc3, and human do have really strong casters and anti-air and ability to expand.

Don’t buff Siege Engine. Buff elf more. And why orc disappeared in this balance patch?

83

Steam Tank can be accessed as a hidden model

https://www.hiveworkshop.com/threads/list-of-hidden-material-within-the-world-editor.323961/

84
  • Too many buffs for Humans. I know you are trying to address HU v UD but that’s not the way to do it. Humans have problems staying alive until they get T3 with expo running.
    Buffing knights is not helping with the issue and it makes Knights too strong. Lumber buff is too much, towers repair rate buff will make it too strong against NE.
  • Frost armor nerf is too big. It may break orc vs ud/ Make it 3/4/5 instead
  • UD expansion ability is still too strong/too cheap. CL 1st provides too many summons in the beginning of the game. One od those things should be nerfed.
  • Stormbolt is the ability to go vs UD. Buff the damage a bit and nerf Thunderclap which is still too oppressive vs Orc and NE
  • I think rod of necromancy should be changed in a different way - buff it to 22 second cooldown but fix the bug that resets the cooldown if the rod is passed between heroes - this is a also a change that would greatly help human defending their expansions
  • remove 2nd taunt from Mountain Giants - this is one of the most annoying units to play against. It’s not a good game mechanic if you are over and over again unable to control your army
  • remove orb of venom stacking. it’s crazy how much damage it deals. To the point sometimes NE picks 3rd ranged hero for the sole purpose of carrying another orb. Of course if you decide to change it, NE should get some buff - I see a room for a Dryad buff
  • Headhunters are a bit too strong. They should get small damage or range nerf. In return give wyverns hp buff because they are way too fragile for their cost and food count. Either that or small agility boost for Blademaster since he was by far the most nerfed hero in last couple years. It might help with some variety against HU which is always played with FS and TC - if you look at hero stats at w3c, blademaster has one of the worst winrates from all heroes.
  • item sell value is too high - there’s very high risk that all items will be sol to get big army asap for one deadly push
4 Likes
85

Abomination now useless.
Knight add Sundering Blades default, great buff.
Tauren have default Pulverize, with the ability to improve skill Pulverize.
Bear have roar.
Abomination need add Disease Cloud default or Cannibalize,equal to the rest of t 3 melee unit

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86

It looks very unprofessional, when developers working on balance patches write “Frost Worm” instead of “Frost Wyrm”.

5 Likes