PTR Version 1.36.1 Notes -- Updated November 9

PTR Discussion and Bug Report
412

Alright, you want to talk balance in depth? So, here’s the problem and what you constantly omit to speak of in this entire breakdown of matchup imbalances based on expected vs actual winrate - you keep approaching this data from the perspective that the ‘expected win rate’ is correct and the ‘actual win rate’ is what needs to be addressed for balance to be achieved.

The data itself does not make a statement at all on what part is off. In reality, NE vs UD having such a high deviation merely means one thing - NE does much worse vs UD than it does vs Orc and Human. But that could be either because the matchup is UD favored and the others are balanced, or the other matchups are NE-favored and the matchup is even. In either case, it results in the data turning out like this.

So there’s a core there that you never add to discussion of this data set - NE has inflated MMR, which means their expected win rate is generally inflated as well. Why can I dare make such a bold statement? Because Night Elves disproportionately make up the top “X%” of MMR compared to how many players it has, no matter what number you pick for X. Here’s the stats on this:

cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1126243614197039235/1126262388241485985/image.png?ex=655e7196&is=654bfc96&hm=f9d1fde26bd347dc5e1ab792f58894e5f01ca8a21d6336345ada229a65ac9a30&

Standout stats:
HU: Total - 2017 (28%) | Top 50% - 993 (27%) | Top 2% - 37 (26%) | Top 1% - 15 (21%)
Orc: Total - 1922 (26%) | Top 50% - 929 (25%) | Top 2% - 32 (22%) | Top 1% - 17 (24%)
UD: Total - 1701 (23%) | Top 50% - 805 (22%) | Top 2% - 30 (21%) | Top 1% - 16 (22%)
NE: Total - 1655 (23%) | Top 50% - 921 (25%) | Top 2% - 46 (32%) | Top 1% - 24 (33%)

As you can see, despite having the lowest number of players (1655, 23%, slightly fewer than Undead), they make up exactly a third of the Top 1% of players. And even if you think “well the bottom 50% should be discounted, they don’t play the game seriously and just go by what looks cool, they pollute the data pool”, they still make up 25% of the top 50% MMR players, which is a good distribution, but then you would expect that representation to remain instead of increasing to 33%. Whatever % of players you decide to take as “serious players”, the number should be consistent, or at least not getting higher and higher.

Now you can choose to interpret this fact in two ways. As far as I’m concerned you have to pick one of the two.

  • Night Elf players are on average better players than those of other races.
  • Night Elf is overall overtuned compared to other races.

If you subscribe to #1, well, that’s a daring view to take and I doubt many will share it, including other NE players. If instead you subscribe to #2, then this casts a shadow on ALL the “expected vs actual” win rates statistics. Because this means Night Elves have disproportionately higher MMR by virtue of being overall overtuned, and thus each of their ‘expected win rate’ stats is inflated. EACH of them.

This means three things:

  • Night Elf vs Undead has a lower disconnect between expected and actual win rate than the raw stats imply.
  • Night Elf vs Orc is not balanced, but actually NE-favored, at least slightly.
  • Night Elf vs Human is, in fact, very likely the most imbalanced matchup in the game.

Note that this does not mean NE vs UD is not UD-favored. It likely still is even if you adjusted the MMR and thus expected win rate of NE players to be more in line with other races. But it is absolutely incredibly disingenuous to put it at this level of importance especially compared to NE vs HU and entirely ignoring the disproportionately high representation of NE in the upper percentiles of MMR while talking about this, which again, unless your position is that NE players are better than others, implies an overall imbalance in favor of NE.

A general nerf to NE such as Moon Wells is thus very much warranted, balance wise. Then we won’t have disproportionately many NEs congregating near the top, lowering their MMR and expected win rate. This lowers the deviation% on NE vs UD, adds the deviation% on NE vs Orc in favor of NE, and increases the deviation% on NE vs HU. Both of the latter ALSO being addressed in this patch with buffs to HU and Orc. So this patch is looking real good for evening out the NE win rates isn’t it?

The elephant in the room I’m not blind to myself is of course the implication of the opposite - are NE players really just that much worse than UD players that their expected win rate of 43.8% against them is too high? It sounds crazy putting it like that, I know, but this is a comparatively very small data set and regardless there’s no way around the fact that NE is way more represented in the top MMR brackets, both in absolute and relative number to the total number of people playing the race. Two explanations for this. Good luck if your position is that NE players are just better than others.

Or do you have a better explanation? I’d love to hear it.

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413

Finally someone says it.

Its quite obvious that the number of Night Elf players is much higher than the rest on high levels. This has been the case for a long time. Night Elf is just way too forgiving. Did you make a mistake by mispositioning your units? Then you can just staff the unit or even the hero home and get HP and mana refilled thanks to your Moonwells.

On low levels, players make mistakes constantly. Just like in other RTS games, players who make fewer mistakes win. And Elf just so happens to care less about mistakes. Orc and Undead have no way to teleport units away, so they can get punished much easier.

Its about time that Elf is easier to punish. There are clearly many Elf players complaining about balance and hard matchups. And there are many of them who play against more skilled players - because their race forgives mistakes much more than other races.

How many Undeads do we have at the top? Exactly 2, one of them is an anomaly and is just better than everyone else. Another is further down and is inconsistent at best.

As it turns out, you have to be extremely good to play Undead at the top level. And for some reason Undead is still getting nerfed only because of one player. This is not the way to balance the game.

Ironically even after the nerfs Undead continues to innovate way more than other races. Lich first, then Ghouls, now Dreadlord 3rd and even Dreadlord first against Human. No other races innovates like Undead does recently.

But unlike for other races, Blizzard did not support it. Remember when Orc started playing Mirror Image + Lightning Shield? Blizzard said “This is great, we like this new playstyle and we support it with buffs!”

So, Undead deserves buffs to support this new playstyle. Buffs to Dreadlord are good, but UD deserve more. Why are Forst Wyrms not adressed? Abomations and Meat Wagons could use a buff. Finally Crypt Lord gets a buff to the worst passive in the game. This is LOOOOONG overdue. This should have happened years ago. But Blizzard for some reason shows huge bias against Undead hero and unit variety.

Frost Wyrms are still not used at all. So where are the changes Blizzard?

One reddit post was enough to get Taurens faster build time? Really? How many posts do you need to buff Frost Wyrms then? Pro players have asked for it for years! This is proof of bias against Undead variety.

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I will not deny Night Elf has always been the most popular race in game. Since Moon came to the scene back in the days, most old wc3 players are Night Elf players.

Moon had a huge impact in the game. No denies there. Even during patches that was horrible for Night Elf during the recent patches, Night Elf was still the most played race.

I will admit it’s possible Night Elf is easier to play starting out.

The question is do you balance for the very top of the top scene or for amateurs. That’s the real question. Also, by making a hand wavey claim that the top players for Night Elf are just all objectively worse than top players of every other race and basing balance from there, the game breaks (and is extremely toxic). Does that mean no Night Elf should play in tier 1 pro scene?

Because at the top scene, top elves have high offrace MMR. Especially when considering how few games those players play offrace. In fact, it only takes 2120 MMR to be in top 2% of W3Champions.
Kaho for instance is 2600 mmr Elf and almost 2400 mmr random. Kaho is a relatively young player to the scene and barely played offraces in comparison. His thousands of games as Elf is not so far away from his random which is only in the low hundreds.

Lawliet for instance is 2590 mmr Elf. And close to 2300 mmr random and when he randoms, he only goes ‘fun strats’ for viewers. He legitimately plays random for viewers playing ‘fun style’ not taking the game seriously. It’s highly apparent when looking at his channel. If he played seriously, I would presume his random is closer to 2400 mmr.

https://www.youtube.com/@lawliettv9916/videos

Foggy is 2500 mmr Elf. His random is close to 2200 MMR when he only played 16 games this season with it.

Lwyfr is 2200 mmr Elf. His orc is 2200 too.

Sini was 2400 mmr Elf last season. His orc wasn 2300 mmr last season.

15sui is 2500 mmr Elf. His random is 2300 mmr (only 30 games played last season).

Then we go more for every day competitive players.
Jens is 2400 mmr Elf main. His HU is 2370 mmr currently.

Pato is 2400 mmr Elf. Pato played 43 games of UD this season and is 2056. Pato’s UD has beaten Deuce’s UD. Deuce is a 2130 UD mmr who does UD mirror especially well and beats 2280 UDs.

Razermoon is 2300 mmr Elf. He only played 54 games of UD this season and is 2008. Razermoon too has beaten Deuce’s UD.

Dise is a 2500 mmr Elf. He plays custom games with his offrace vs Razermoon from time to time nowadays. His offrace can compete against Razermoon’s Elf.

Smurf (former UD main who switched to NE main long ago) is 2200 mmr Elf. In 38 games he hit 2000 mmr with Orc on Season 15.

Soyma is 2000 mmr Elf. His random is 1933 mmr with only 37 games this season.

LilDc is 2200 mmr Elf. His orc is close to 2100 mmr with only 32 games played this season.

Starshaped has 2095 mmr Elf. His orc is 2069 mmr this season.

So then the question becomes: Are UD players just worse in micro? Isn’t mirror supposed to be mostly about micro and has the least worry about the game understanding of racial matchups? So why are UD players struggling to NE offrace UD players who has barely any games of UD played.
UD players who can play against 2280 UD mirror players losing games to 2300 mmr Elf trying out UD 50 games? There seems something extremely wrong there too.

If you go by your logic, UD players need extreme nerfs because clearly, their MMR is highly inflated.
Those UD players played tens of thousands or close to hundred thousand games of UD over the period of WC3. Meanwhile Elf players who have little to no understanding of race (and is offracing to have fun in free time) are performing much better. And since mirror is mostly about micro, it probably implies in similar skill level, NE players micro better than UD players. At least in the 2~2.3k MMR space.

This is further highlighted by Cechi and Razermoon trying out offracing each other.
Cechi (2300 UD) and Razermoon (2300 Elf) both have been trying swapping races.
Razermoon had around 5 wins and Cechi only had 1 win.
The discrepancy was pretty noticeable. Again, this when both players decided to offrace each other at the same MMR range.
Cechi himself admitted with no issues the match up highly favors UD. His reasoning was that gargoyles are way too oppressive at the MMR 2350 and below so it is of full expectation UD should perform extremely well vs NE.
Note: This was a UD player saying this.

As a reference, Liqs is a 2200 UD. His Elf is 1750.

Also, most players in WC3 do not offrace. They have tens of thousands if not hundred thousand games in their main races for 1v1. And like 30~50 games in offrace if they decide to give an offrace a try in a season. It also doesn’t help when offracing, these players are playing for fun and not caring about winning.

There’s another issue in this game.
Night Elf is the only race in which players actively try to improve at the amateur scene. In fact, Night Elf has a discord with almost 250 members. No other race has that for the western scene. In fact, even top level players like Lawliet is willing to help if you are desperate. I don’t see that for any other races.
Night Elf also has far more resources. Ark has ‘Learning Night Elf’ series and all. No other race has it and the other guides are generally completely out of date or out of touch with actual competitive scene.

Your implication is making a huge claim back too. Players who hit 2500 with their main race after tens of thousands of games should be 2400 mmr? Their offrace they ‘troll around’ and barely play in comparison is 2300. That would also be absurdity.

Also, the max cap in w3champion for MMR for HU/Orc/NE is about the same at around 2600. That’s the absolute peak outside UD which is 2700.
Are you stating despite NE being more popular as a race (more players) and far more resources, NE peak should be far lower than the other races at 2500?
Kaho only has just over 60 games with random this season and is close to 2400 random MMR. His main he grinded thousands is 2600. None of that makes sense too.

The peak MMR for HU, Orc, and NE are similar. So if you claim the peak MMR for NE should be lower, that means NE should not compete in the tier 1 scene. That also is absurdity.

Players often forget to realize a race can be easier to play at the amateur scene. But does that matter? Game should be balanced for the pro scene. If you for instance listen to 1200 MMR players, ghouls need to keep getting buffs. But that would make the pro scene even more one sided.
Who are we balancing the game for? The tier 1 scene or for every day players? If we want to balance for the tier 1 scene, NE/Orc/HU have similar peak MMR so claiming NE should be worse means to remove NE from the scene.

Also, the offraces for many NE players are just too close to their main mmrs which they grinded tens of thousands of games if we go by this logic. A 2400 MMR Elf like Jens is 2370 MMR with HU.
So, should Jens who grinded NE all his WC3 have his NE MMR lower than his HU MMR? Those two are within boundaries of error (2~3 game wins).

And NE players do disproportionately well vs NE when offracing to UD. In fact, I would say in average especially from 1.9k to 2.3k, if you get both the UD and NE in similar MMR and have them offrace one another, the NE player would take overwhelming number of wins.
So then is UD just over inflated? No. Realistically, the NE vs UD just has such a high issue that it’s apparent even when both offrace.

In fact, even if you go Razermoon’s (NE player) UD, his best matchup is against NE. His UD offrace beats 2100 MMR Elves.

No matter how you slice and dice it, there’s problems with NE vs UD in this game. I can’t speak for all races across the board and how NE fares to others races. But at least NE vs UD is easily documentable. There’s problems with the matchup as a whole.

If you fully believe NE players who played tens if not hundred thousand games with their own race should have their main race be similar mmr to their offrace mmr which they play like 50 games when bored in a season, then sure. Otherwise, it’s clear at least at the very very top mmr, the mmr is fully deserved. As of whether the race is easier overall for every day players is a different concern.
You balance to the latter and unless you completely redesign NE bottom up, you are implying NE should effectively be removed from tier 1 competitive ladder vs UD which is already basically the case.a

EDIT: For reference, 2120 mmr is considered top 2% in w3champions. So basically all these elves are all < 1% on off races too which they never play. So your stats argument doesn’t even work because all the elf players are offracing < 2% too. You can legit ask those elves to swap races tomorrow to help pad your stats and the percentiles would be simply shifted to another race.

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The biggest imbalance of the game can be stated through the following issue.

Kaho is a 2600 MMR Elf. His random is close to 2400 and barely has any games played in comparison.

I would bet my life more on Anima (2200 HU) taking a game off Happy in Autumn Leaves going MK first over Kaho going Elf vs Happy in that map.

Kaho’s offrace mmr is leaps higher than Anima’s main race. So why do I have zero faith in the matchup especially in certain maps of NE vs UD regardless?

I’m not saying Happy shouldn’t win or anything. I’m just pointing out the extremity of the NE vs UD is very easily documentable.

Especially when in general, many players in 2k~2.3k range, when forced to play offrace NE vs UD (both offrace), the NE main will win majority of the games given similar MMR.
That’s a glaring issue that needs to be addressed too.

Again, I don’t know about other matchups. I am not talking about UD vs HU/Orc or NE vs HU/Orc. I am talking strictly about NE vs UD.
At least in NE vs UD, the imbalance is apparent.

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416

Nerfing moonwll mana is way to much. Even as a player not on pro level once UD are on your doorstep it is basically lost. You won’t win that when they blight your base…

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Yes, player skill is imbalanced. Kaho never got to play vs Happy until after the last patch.

Turns out all it took was nerfing Undead into the ground for some new upstart Night Elf player to beat Happy. Massive nerfs of 33% to Statue Mana Regeneration. Ontop of that more exp. Nerfs to Statue HP, Destroyer HP, Destroyer damage, nerf to Frost Armor, nerf to Orb, nerf to Dark Ritual, 3 nerfs to Unholy Aura. Atleast 2 nerfs to disease Cloud.

No wonder some new upstarting players are suddenly able to win vs the best player in the world. There is no way to improve your skill by that much in the span of one patch cycle. If Kaho was skilled enough to beat Happy then he should be beating other players and other races just as well.

But thats not the case. The wins of Kaho are only thanks to the overnerfing of Undead. And the overnerfing of Undead is only because of Happy. The whole playerbase suffers because one player is better than others.

No other competitive sports has insane changes like this. Imagine reducing the engine output of Formula 1 Cars because Lewis Hamilton wins too often. This is exactly whats been going on for Undead. Undead is nerfed undeservedly and denied new fun options for too long.

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Kinda of a very specific comparison. Particular players with a particular strategy on a particular map. You can not conclude a general balance from that.

The argument of players using random or off-race is kinda weak as well; it depends a lot on particular preferences and how off is your off-race. Happy´s NE is on a very high lvl. At least compared with his HU. Happy has lost tournament games against players like Pato and (if I remember correctly) Ag3nt while playing HU. I’m not rating them as bad players at all, but they probably would not be able to knock out Happy if he plays ORC or NE (at least the pato of 3-5 months ago). This means that his lvl with HU is relatively low (again, compared with other races).

Also, suppose that race A is easier to use than race B at 1500 MMR. Then you pick two players, both around 1700-1800MMR. One from race A and one from race B. If they off-race, the player off-racing with race A has an advantage because it is easier to use at 1500 MMR. This does not speak about the balance of those races at 1800 MMR, if any, it speaks about the balance at 1500 MMR.

All this is just to point out that MMR and elo arguments should be considered, but just to complete other (stronger) arguments. I agree that UD is op against NE. But I consider a much stronger argument the fact that an UD can try to tower rush a NE and that is not an all-in. Even if the UD causes no damage, the game continues kinda even. And if the UD causes slight damage but is defended, the game continues with an advantage for the UD. That should not be that way (in my opinion). If a race can tower rush on tier 1, and that is not an all-in, then that particular strategy should be nerfed. Another argument which I consider more valid than the MMR argument is that in some scenarios, the UD can play 1 base vs 2 base all game long and still win cause of how good of a carry the lich is. That used to be ok when UD was not able to expand and acolytes were more vulnerable to harras. But now that those weaknesses have been addressed, lich should be nerfed. In particular, Nova should be nerfed, which is kinda the big problem.

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+1, can we get some answers Kaivax? The campaigns need more attention.

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No that’s actually exactly what is not the case and missing the entire point of why this is an imbalance. Night Elf is not the most popular race. It is the least played of all races on w3c. If 33% of all players were Night Elves, then it would not be a balance problem that 33% of pro players are Night Elves. You can question why it’s such a popular pick but regardless they would be represented proportionally to how many players play it. Instead, we have Night Elves making up the lowest amount of players overall, but suddenly the highest amount of players once you look at the top 30%. That’s the part that’s off no matter how you spin it, no matter what people’s reasons are for playing one race or another.

I’ll also say I fully expected myself before looking into this for NE to be a more popular race. But it isn’t. It’s dead last. It was surprising to me too.

First off, answering your question at the end, obviously not. Night Elf is overrepresented. I don’t want them to be underrepresented, I want them to be proportionally represented. If 25% of somewhat serious players are Elves, I’m fine with 25% of top players being Elves. Not fine with 33%, not fine with 0%, and it’s again disingenuous of you to pretend I’m advocating for the latter instead of for balance.

My only basis for this is that I simply have a hard time buying that outside of individuals, the overall people playing one race are generally going to be better than the people playing other races. While you are the one claiming that Night Elf players are indeed better than top players of other races; you can make a case for why that is of course, access to resources, inspiration from Moon, and bring data points regarding their off-racing, but it is still what it comes back down to - the statement that yes, Night Elf players are better than others, and this and that is why, and this and that shows it.

And this, what you called the “real question”, hell no that’s not the real question, in fact that’s an entirely corrupting dichotomy to make because you can do both just fine, and I would make the argument that if you sacrifice one for the other you failed at your job. Something like Moon Well regeneration unequivocally benefits every night elf player on every level of play. But you can also make other adjustments that allow the really good Night Elf players to perform better instead, allowing their skill a chance to shine.

The Warden buffs are actually a fairly good example of this IMO. Now I could be wrong on this, but from my perspective, mid-level players will likely not hit the new unit cap on Fan of Knives to begin with (or shoot their positioning in the foot trying to do so, doing themselves more harm than good), or have had their Blink on cooldown for 2-3 seconds to begin with before using it again thus negating the cooldown buff, so the buffs will affect them less, while players at the highest levels can actually make use of these changes. Now this is still only a buff to Warden, meaning it has no impact on any games where Warden is not picked, so I would say it isn’t enough as its application is too limited on its own. But it serves as an example for the kind of adjustments that can straighten this out a bit better.

There are other things that come to mind. Lower the damage of Entangling Roots while potentially even looking to increase the duration, to make good usage of the spell not its raw damage output on its own but rather rooting units at the right time to be able to put damage on it with attacks meanwhile. Lower the damage of Huntress bouncing glaives while potentially increasing their range a little to make good Huntress play revolve more around attacking the right targets instead of having a comparatively lower gap to A-moving. Idk I’m just spitballing, but the point is you can approach adjustment patches like this, and put thought into how it affects different levels of play. There’s nothing preventing you, or anyone on the balance team, from doing that.

From my point of view, UD honestly does seem to have the opposite issue. They are punished quite hard for mistakes, they just have a good amount of tools that you can use skillfully to avoid them. Acolytes have high speed and regeneration so you can keep them safe … but IF you do lose one, especially during tech, you’re screwed way more than anyone else. Destroyers are amazing units that do a lot all at once, but then if you lose them too easily against enemy anti-air, you also lose a lot at once, and if you don’t manage your mana well with them they are way worse than they can be as well. Heck, Ghouls may be the worst example, give them to a mediocre player and they’ll die too easily to make work, give them to a top level player and they can end games at the 10 minute mark.

And let’s also talk about the 1 second duration / 1.5 second cooldown discrepancy on the Obsidian Statue spells which is honestly outrageous and makes top level UDs just flat out have 1.5x as fast restoration from them as mid-level UDs, regardless of which you balance the numbers around it simply creates a disconnect between different levels of play that I would argue should not exist. Just balance them around 1.5 second intervals and make the duration 1.5 seconds to match.

Now obviously they also have some units with which they can arguably just A-move a bit too well, and perhaps their spells are a bit too much of a crutch, so it’s not like this is really that one-sided; they are represented far more proportionally compared to NE so all this seems to mostly cancel out overall. But again, this is all things you can think about and adjust accordingly, to address multiple levels of play. Extremely general things like moon well regeneration rate affects all levels full stop. Things that have a heavier execution barrier to them more affects the top level.

Now everything you say is “my implication” and “my statements” are frankly again, IMO, me just pointing out an observable imbalance and you insisting it ‘does have reasons’ like I’m crazy to even bring them up, instead of acknowledging that it’s a valid skepticism to have. Especially with the expected vs actual win rate; you’re the one who keeps bringing them up without really giving this context, which is the definition of giving a biased view. I don’t like the implication that NE players are worse than they appear as either, I just dislike it less than the implication that all other races field worse players overall for some reason. It’s not impossible for that to be the case but NE players actually being inflated is at least on the same level of “not impossible”. At the very least you’ll have to admit it earns being rightfully skeptical over, much like the NE vs UD matchup itself does earn being put into question. Like I said previously, I do in fact buy it being UD-favored even with the NE MMR bias straightened out.

Also you betting on Anima over Kaho is just a you issue from my pov to be quite honest. Kaho has taken down Happy 3-0 in a Bo5 at least once that I witnessed myself, and brought him to a 3-3 (even if Happy ultimately took the final 4-3 home) on multiple occasions. He is absolutely perfectly capable of beating Happy and off the cuff I’d bet he has one of the better rates at doing so among all players of all races. I would bet on Kaho to beat Happy more than most others without a doubt, and I think you’re just underestimating him. And while you can say you don’t know and don’t care about other matchups, they are again part of the basis of the very data points you keep bringing up yourself - NE gets their MMR from somewhere after all, which is where their expected win rate also comes from.

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That’s a pretty weak argument. A player being good with one race and bad with another is not a parameter. Usain Bolt is good at short sprints, but that doesn’t mean he’ll win a marathon. People can be good at certain things and bad at others

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The better question we should ask is why other races aren’t creating resources to grow their existing player base.

Good chunk of top 2% of Elves (honestly top < 1%) all have their off race MMR within the top 2% (again, honestly top < 1%).
How come other players in their races cannot achieve that proportionately.

There’s definitely a lack of resources for other races in the western scene. I don’t see player level of Dise, Jens, Razer etc. coaching elves for free. And constantly reviewing what to improve upon.

Players playing other races currently have no support because the players in those races do not care to grow their peers in their races.

This is most apparent on the fact many of the top 2% of elves all have their off race mmr in the top 2%. So your top 2% mmr proportion does not even make sense since you can legitimately swap out those elves to any race and the % ranking would still apply.

Jens for instance like I state is 2400 main Elf. His HU offrace is 2370 (same league as Hawk and Leon). In case you don’t understand the implications of this, it’s top 0.4% on Elf and top 0.4% on Hu. Why should he be penalized because Hu main players are worse at the game due to lack of resources?

Foggy: Top 2% both NE and Random
Lawliet: Top 2% both NE and Random
Lwyfr: Top 2% both NE and Orc
Sini: Top 2% both NE and Orc
15Sui: Top 2% both NE and Random
Jens: Top 2% both NE and HU
Pato: Top 2% both NE and off race
Razermoon: Top 2% both NE and random
Dise: Top 2% both NE and off race
Smurf: Top 2% both NE and off race
LilDc: Top 2% both NE and Orc
Danrushui: Top 2% both NE and Random
Starshaped: Top 3% both NE and Orc

And again, I listed all the other elves too. In fact, a good chunk of the elves in the top 2% bracket are listed from my post (since many of them have multiple accounts so you run into double/triple/quadruple/quintuple counting).

This is not a race problem at that point if the race at top 2% has also the skill to be top 2% with only like 30 games played on an offrace.
There’s a problem with lack of support for the other races. Players like Happy just don’t care about coaching UD players get better.

If anything, apparently if you decide to learn to play competitively currently and you choose Night Elf, you have higher chance being top 2% with a race like Orc than if you chose Orc from the start. It’s then a community issue, not a balance issue. Players in top 2% of other races should be coaching/growing their players in their races then.
It’s bad enough a good chunk of competitive NE players are better off race players than the off race mains in the 2k to 2.3k mmr range. And it’s safe to conclude the tier S (top 10 in the game) can all offrace within top 2% easily if they want to; those are the top 0.1% of their races.

Of course the argument always back is Happy, Infi, Sok, Lyn, TH000, Starbucks are good with off races. But overall in the mmr range (outside the Tier 1 which are those players), you systematically will have higher mmr after playing 50 games offracing after maining Elf thousands of games than grinding thousands of games in offrace from the start.
There’s just lack of resources to understand what you should look out for (map control, awareness, positioning, etc.) for the other races. You need players at the top to coach.
You don’t punish that by nerfing the race. That affects the pro scene as well and NE struggles very much vs UD already.

Also, to your other commentary about warden. Warden is an extremely moonwell juice dependent hero. Nerfing moonwell is actually an overall nerf to the Warden in the game. So if you want more warden play, then the change on moonwell makes even less sense because you made her weak overall at all stages of the game. And she’s especially fragile early game which is even more nerfed with the moonwell juice. Added on with HU and Orc buffs in this PTR.
As long as blademaster exists, warden isn’t going to be the go to hero in pro scene vs Orc. I had many games in which level 3 warden died from full hp to 1 level 1 hex + blademaster crits.
As for UD, UD already has hard counters to warden which are not addressed. Warden is extremely bad vs nerubian tower rush which is even more buffed overall (because nerubian tower nerf does not point out the issue of 5 fortified fast repair perma-slow on hero) because moonwell juice is nerfed. And UD expansion is still not addressed which is one of the hard counters in the game vs Warden. Something that is systematically an issue with the two races having structural differences (one needs to create a main then root while the latter just roots right away).
As for HU, I don’t see much of what others see. It takes 2 seconds in the current patch to kill 1 peasant with fan level 3 after the peasant HP buff (more than enough time to load on zepelin). Increasing the unit cap does not address the fact peasants have more HP. Lawliet even pointed out in his stream that for pro scene, this buff isn’t that good (due to nature of the matchup). Now, for everyday players? Might feel different. But here’s the issue.
Again, who do we balance for? The Tier S scene or for every day players? Good HU players would buy a zepelin. Regular HU players won’t. And it creates such a different outcome.

Also, warden is getting hard nerfs overall if you really understand what’s going on. HU got buffs (ignoring Orc since it’s not viable). Warden is flimsy early game and is extremely dependent on having moonwell juice. That portion of the game is nerfed. At all stages of the game.
Warden needs blink and shadow strike to survive vs UD in the beginning. There’s no dps increase at all then (blink is not dps) to fend vs timing pushes. It might get better after warden retrains to fan of knives at level 5 but that’s after the timing push at pro scene. And the timing push right now is too deadly added on with the fact we are nerfing Elf’s ability to fend the timing push with nerfed moonwell juice. Warden fends the tier 3 push far worse than Demon Hunter and currently, even Demon Hunter cannot fend it properly at top scene. You are now asking to play a more suboptimal hero against the push with even more nerfs on healing ability to survive. Fan of knives buff change isn’t applied until after the timing push which is currently a big issue in the matchup itself.

This is why the moonwell nerf is structurally horrible for the current game. Because it affects the race at all stages of the game. From the very beginning to the end. Maybe we want to point out the late game. But touching moonwell juice affects early game as well.
Every other race got their early games buffed hard to accommodate for the new balance. I agree with Neo on this. “This is the right way of change but it’s probably the wrong time to change for the current patch”.
I’m sure you agree with me we want to even out the balance across the player base too. But the current game is balanced around this moonwell for years now. Everything would need to be re-adjusted in every race again because everything from the early game changes for Elf now. Rifles, ghouls, gargs, grunts, serpent wards, mirror image would all need re-adjustments because early game is changing for Elf.
We might want to be pointing out the late game but touching this changes everything from the start to end of game.
And the worst part is, it does nothing to solve the actual issues of the game (in fact, it worsens it). NE vs UD is an issue which needs to be addressed this PTR. It’s bad enough TH000 (HU) in his stream admits while watching Moon vs 120 that ‘influence from the western patches over the years’ implying this matchup specifically favors UD at the top scene. Last time I checked, HU players do not like admitting anything beneficial about NE especially after the immolation buff.

Now, if you believe the general players here know more than Lawliet, Moon, Colorful, Kaho, Soin, Focus, Sok, Lyn, TH000, Dise then sure. But the active pros in the top scene generally agree NE vs UD favors UD well (which should be addressed in the PTR).

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423

hi Kaivax,

there’s some issue with human priest, especially when dispel . example, when there’s innerfire cast on friendly unit and enemy cast bad spell friendly unit, when we dispel it. all good spell and bad spell disappeared totally.

will blizzard fix it by:

  1. dispel only on friendly unit:
    -remove bad spell (eg: slow) + remain good spell (eg: inner fire)

  2. dispel only on enemy unit:
    -remove good spell (eg: innerfire), and remain bad spell (eg: slow)

reason:
inner fire cost 35 mana which is alot little mana pool , when some player dont use archmage.

424

Good changes for NE moonwells. Do not listen whining guys about this nerf. Grubby is very smart player. And he have good point of view why moonwells are broken (he made video with calculations of how many gold each race need for heal after each fight) and NE do not need gold for heal. Thats why they broken

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425

got link ? for the video?

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Please stop spamming your irrelevant scribbles @AccCreate, get a life and get a sleep bro =)

We all understand that you are an elf fanatic but @Kaivax knows better than you.

I already wrote in my previous post what needs to be addressed.

In simple words - make Orc race great again =)

The only thing that we both agree is that the most urgent nerf shall apply to UD; more particularly frenzy ghouls nerf and Coil/Nova nerf.

In the current patch it looks like this UD > NE > ORC / HUM (50-50).

Cheers!

-NWS

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427

Hi.

As grubbys ally i can confirm he was trolling with moonwell nerf guys, revert and buff mgs to apologise

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After watching a B2W stream about PTR changes I decided that one post from me about that is not enough from me. If Neo wants to hear “our suggestions, our constructive ideas” about how we, players, see balance changes for NE, ok. He’s my thoughts, how I see NE in the next patch.
Just in case, a little disclaimer: That opinion is my personal, and other NEs like AccCreate or others can see it whatever how they want, don’t care much, tbh. :slightly_smiling_face:

In the realities of the W3C/competitive scene, sometimes we see a picture, in NE vs UD matchup, UD in ~9 min can come rushing with ghouls, while NE barely has anything to stop it on that time. So my guess is, needs to give NE an opportunity to stop it.
My 1st suggestion for that is to change the Moonstone amount of stacks available to buy. If we do closer look at shops from other races, Human have opportunity to heal yourself from scroll which gives HoT all units in decent range (it’s over 600 I guess), Orcs have opportunity to buy Healing Salve twice and each have 3 charges to heal their grunts/heroes, Undead have opportunity to do heal via sacrificial dagger, one dagger from shop, which gives 2 charges of it. And we return to NE and see that we can heal only through moon wells, we DON’T have any healing at T1 from shop, and now you want to even reduce that by lowering mana regen. Ok, let’s pretend for a sec that it is needed, but maybe as compensation for that nerf, we’ll receive additional Moonstone from the shop to recover less mana, but longer? Nobody would suffer from a longer night, I think. Otherwise, don’t touch mana regen, otherwise NE will barely have any resources to heal somehow.
My 2nd suggestion sounds like, change Druids of the Claw a bit differently. If we see NE units, specifically talons, on 1st upgrade to them, they receive crow from, and then Cyclone on 2nd upgrade. How about doing the same for bears? I mean, a slightly lower HP while at bear form and give opportunity to make bear form on 1st upgrade? And giving Rejouv a 2nd upgrade (at T3). This can give opportunity to fight back timing pushes, like was mentioned earlier from UD.
And the 3rd and last suggestion for this matchup is to bring back Chimeras somehow, due to not building them on most of the games (or any of games) due to costs and requirements. Maybe it’s rough, but give NE the opportunity to build Chim roosts at T2, and train Chimeras, but Corrosive Breath keep at T3 as a requirement. How about to lower requirements, like I told before and as example, had the opportunity to stop mass ghouls through Chimeras? Not sure if that’s gonna be broken and imbalanced, because Chimeras can’t attack air, and gargs can make a counter play, as result, easily kill those due to high mobility and attack to light armor.

Now, about changes on PTR.

I’m not sure if that’s fine to make both nerfs for NE, I mean nerf mana regen and Immolation from DH. Neo on his stream said the right thing, that needs to pick one from these two, but not both. Otherwise we might face a situation that NE would better stick with tavern heroes first, instead of their own. Due to Firelord changes with Larvas, it might become a better choice to start, which is not normal, imo.

Plus, if we’re not gonna change how I’ve suggested, then we need to do something with Ghouls and especially with T3 upgrade Ghoul Frenzy, this gives them A LOT. With DK aura and for example Frost Armor from Lich, it becomes barely a killable machine on a timing push. And if we keep those ghouls, we need some countermeasures. Ideas are being said above.
And of course, conclusion of all this is this from B2W stream about balance changes: “If moon well changes ruin NE, blame Grubby.” Here’s a clip of that: clips.twitch.tv/PlacidBoxyGoosePlanking-QQbXOJkHjjov8EVn
If someone have any other ideas where I’m right or wrong, go ahead and tell me how you see this, instead of stupid balance by changing only values, without change any mechanics. And crying about “not enough nerfs for NE and needs to do more”, and when I ask question about “how it should be”, people don’t know how exactly did that, mentions only stupid things, like change staff from shop in T2 to be even LONGER cd than it is, which is stupid.

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429

nerfing moonwells will kill the race speceficly vs rushes and orc in general ( elf dont go bears vs orc) elf will have less healing and we’ll see more rifle 1 base pushes and ud t3 pushes to end the game as fast as possible. also a nerf to mws is basically nerf ing all ne hero s cuz they all rely on mws except for potm but potm only played in ne mirror.

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430

+2 agility on the blademaster? That’s ridiculous- the blademaster already overpowered at high levels. I think they should undo the mirror image damage buff as high level players abuse it regularly.

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I appreciate the effort from Blizzard for trying to balance this old game, but nerfing moon wells will severely weaken Night Elf during the early game in all matchups, but especially vs UD who can Nerubian tower push extremely fast. Even if a night elf survives the initial push, he will have a hard time coming back with moon wells regenerating less moon juice. We already see UD expanding right after failed pushes and succeeding. This will further exacerbate that issue.

It will also weaken their ability to harass UD expansions as this is dependent on moon wells to heal the heroes up so they can resume creeping. UD can creep with skeletons/heal with death coil and has improved regen with aura, orc has salves and SH (particularly good with level 2 or 3 chain healing), HU creeps with elementals and has regen scrolls. Later on, UD gets statues and HU gets priests. Our only other healing besides moon wells comes from bears. This is why bears are so often used, it is our only other source of healing because we already cannot depend on moon wells all game as it currently is.

The DH and Warden are especially dependent on moon wells during the early game, and the DH is already getting nerfed. The improvement to Fan of Knives, while appreciated, does not make up for the glaring weakness in the early game caused by reduced moon well regeneration. The Warden will likely not be able to survive long enough to reap the benefits of the buff. In short, please reconsider the moon well nerf until we see the results of the other changes. Thank you.

3 Likes