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General Discussion
1

Currently, top professional Warcraft 3 tournaments are all held in China. Tournaments featuring the Undead (UD) are completely unexciting!

The current UD is too strong and needs a slight nerf.

Anyone who regularly watches the games knows:
① When UD plays against Night Elf (NE), the combination of Death Coil (C) and Frost Nova (N) plus Destroyers can take down Bears in seconds. It’s like an all-round air, land, and sea strike against the Hippogryph Rider and Druid of the Claw (Dryad/Bear) build.
② When UD faces Orc (ORC), the fierce Orcs are reduced to running Wind Riders and fighting guerrilla warfare. Wind Riders get hit for free by N+C when they meet, and their frontline collapses at the first touch.

Looking at the tournaments, it’s always UD pressing against the opponent’s main base, using the opponent’s main base as the main battlefield!

UD can directly upgrade to Tier 3 at 30 population, with no vacuum period at all. Their unit transition is the fastest, and their base is as solid as a fortress…

In the wild, team fights, UD’s terrifying damage crushes the other three races. Moreover, the Death Knight (DK) just needs to stay back and cast Death Coil (C), while the Lich’s Frost Nova (N) is an instant cast from miles away…

UD vs. Night Elf/Orc is just a formality; they push straight to victory with a Tier 3 push with the Orb.

Blizzard currently doesn’t understand balance. Are they only relying on suggestions from European amateur players and European UD streamers? It’s really disappointing. If Blizzard has no one in charge of balance, they might as well hand over balance to Asia.

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Meanwhile, at the “everyone who doesn’t play in china (apparently)” level, UD is notstanding out so much and most people seem to be complaining about NE.

Also even being a pro at the game doesn’t mean you understand balance, it only means you know how to take what you’ve been given and use it to its fullest effect. It doesn’t mean you know where the issues are or how to fix them.

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UD, a race with strong potential but requiring skilled players. Amateurs should not complain about balance issues due to their own lack of strength. Only top-tier players can unleash the race’s maximum potential. The small number of UD players is because there are no new blood joining in, but this doesn’t mean UD should be endlessly buffed just because of the low player count.

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Yes, yes they should. Balance affects everyone whether you’re a China Pro or a total noob. Everyone deserves to be able to enjoy the game, not just pros, so balance should consider every level of play to the maximum extent possible. It is possible to have your cake and eat it too.

If you build your game for pros only, then only pros will play it, and eventually the game will die because no new people will pick it up. Pros are a tiny fraction of the total playerbase. Alienating 99% of players by ignoring them entirely is not good balance policy. Riot Games has manated to have their cake and eat it too by tailoring specific balance changes to address issues at particular skill levels without affecting the others (too much). There’s no reason Blizzard (or whoever else) can’t do the same.

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Hello, may I ask if you are the person in charge of balance?

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As soon as the paychecks start coming in!

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The current balance of Warcraft III is really poor, but the understanding of the game in Europe and Asia is truly different, with a lack of communication.XD

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It really isn’t that bad. it could be and has been at times in the past a LOT worse.

It is impossible to achieve perfect balance with multiple factions with differing abilities. The only way to achieve true balance would be to make all sides identical, but then while it would be balanced, it wouldn’t be a fun game.

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In our part of Asia, viewers love watching professional matches every day, and there are tournaments sponsored by bosses. However, the excitement of current matches is hard to come by. One race is too strong while another is too weak, making it feel like the excitement of matches in this version has dropped significantly.

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In the rest of the world, more of us like to actually play the game rather than watch it. Warcraft III was never created specifically to be an esport. It simply happened naturally as anything that people can possibly compete in, competition will happen.

If you find the excitement to have dropped, consider playing the game yourself and creating your own excitement.

Like I said, up until this latest patch, people have been constantly complaining about NE around here, meanwhile, people keep saying things like “fiends are too weak” and generally, the vibe I get from the community is that UD is not overpowered. So, while there might possibly be a pro-level specific issue with UD, any change to them has to take into account how it will affect play for everyone else, so that something you nerf for being too strong at the pro level doesn’t make the race useless for everyone else.

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Thank you. It’s an honor to communicate with you. The differences between Chinese and Western cultures also lead to different understandings of the game.

When it comes to balance adjustments, they should also refer to data from professional players, including win rates in matchups between different races and the skill levels of players. If one race consistently dominates championships or maintains an excessively high win rate, there must be issues with the balance.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Balance changes need to look at the game as a whole. They should be collecting data from all games played from everyone to identify these kinds of problems. That includes pros but also everyone else. If one race is simply OP in every sense of the term, then it would surely show at all levels of play and not just the pro level.

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If you balance around the skill level of average noobs, the game would be completely busted overall. As soon as someone overcomes the intended design compensating for lower level play, you’re going to see unintended effects and clearly overpowered units.

I still don’t understand the whole, “balancing for pros will make the game only for pros,” as this doesn’t make any sense. A well balanced game that players can grow into is much more fun and interesting than making things easier for lower level players.

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There is fresh blood, new players are present, but they would never choose undead, which is impossible to play now. Today they all put human and play mass rifles + paladin.

if you want to see MORE new undead players, you need to make the race more playable. Not like it is now, where it takes under 500 APM micro to save one fiend in the fight.

A newbie will put a human and with 50 APM win anyone. Or he will put an elf and play mass huntress. Or he will put an orc and play mass hh.

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You realize this guy is arguing that UD is OP right? not weak?

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and he also argues that there aren’t enough new undead players. And I argue why there aren’t enough of them.

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My basis for saying it is the thought that pro players take a lot of things for granted that a more casual player will not. While you can and do improve by looking at how pro players do things (Especially if they are the more “teacher-y” types that explain what they do and why), a lot of the time what they do are on a level completely beyond the average person. When I say “balancing for pros will make the game only for pros” I mean that changes that are made with solely pros in mind will usually only mean anything to pro players and those who follow in their footsteps. Casuals meanwhile see that while they aren’t the best (Or even attempt to) while having fun in a casual sense, they still feel beholden to the whims of pro players in a way that takes away the fun.

Like I may have mentioned on this forum sometime in the past, I usually think of the 20/80 → 80/20 mix: Top 20% of the playerbase has 80% of the impact in the balancing decisions, with the bottom 80% having 20% of the impact. This way the more casual playerbase still has some say to keep the game fun for them as well, while still giving pros and those with more indepth knowledge of the game’s mechanics plenty of room to suggest things to fiddle and finetune to make a more balanced game.

You might not agree with me on this, but I always find it better to find a middle ground for pros and regular people.

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18

The fallacy in your logic here is that looking only at pro players will make your game more balanced. Pros and balance don’t automatically go hand in hand. For one thing, the pro playerbase and the regular players approach the game in very different ways that extend far beyond simple skill differences- so a change that improves balance for pros doesn’t necessarily make the game better for regular players and vice versa.

This is the reason why with League of Legends, Riot makes balance changes that target specific skill ranges, with the goal of improving balance for those players without adversely affecting it for others.

For example, an ability could be too strong in lower ranks of the game but is perfectly fine with pros- This might be because the ability has too much or little power allocated to it factoring in the skill required to use it properly. To make this ability weaker for lower ranks without making it useless for high rank players, rather than adjusting the damage/power outright, they might increase the skill requirement to make full use of it. Consider an ability that’s imbalanced in the hands of pros, but not at lower ranks- they can balance this without weakening it where it isn’t a problem by combining a nerf to its strength while improving its ease of use.

When League of Legends releases a patch, they color code important balance changes, indicating what skill level they’re targeting with the adjustment, and they provide explanations for what problem the change aims to solve and how their solution does so without compromising balance at other skill levels.

As I said before- Only looking at pro players does not guarantee a better balanced game, because pros and non-pros in many cases play the game completely differently- it’s not merely a matter of pros click more buttons or have more technical skill. And skilled players are not without bias either, you can’t talk to a human pro and expect unbiased balance input when faced with their race being nerfed for instance.

Taking all skill levels into account does not mean “make the game easier,” We’re not talking about learning curve here, we’re talking about balance. They’re two different things. Good balance and learning curve have no direct correlation.

The notion that only pro players know what makes a game balanced is false. Primarily, the devs know better than any one group of players because they have access to all the data, and all the tuning levers they can utilize to achieve better balance. That doesn’t mean the opinions of any particular group are of no value, just that they are just one piece of a bigger puzzle.

Now, as BrotherRoga said, the opinions of the elite community carry more weight, just not all of it. By considering all perspectives, as well as data collected from all games played, a better experience can be achieved regardless of skill level.

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The idea that balancing the game at the top and below the top is contradictory is frankly fallacious. Balance isn’t exactly a matter of strength and weakness as much as it’s a disconnect between ease of execution and ease of counter. Take a strategy that’s too easy to execute but comparatively hard to counter, make it harder to execute, you’ll have solved the balance issue without affecting pro play since they already have the execution required to make it work, or if it’s not played at pro play to begin with it literally will not affect it to begin with.

For the most part the well around balance is just poisoned to hell and back anyways, since there’s no shortage of people for any of the 4 races (whether they play it personally or just root for it as a spectator) to argue that their side needs buffs and others need nerfs. It’s all noise to trim through and really mostly ignore. That’s what you’re choosing to be a part of with topics like these. Any balance the game may have will be in spite of it, not because of it.

I think ultimately the right thing to focus on for the blizzard devs is creating and/or enabling novel ways to play, as that’s exciting for all players, you can see that in pros just as much as casuals. The Tauren and Witch Doctor changes a little while back were some of the most hype in recent memory because they targeted this.

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This isn’t true, though. Making more units viable isn’t something only pros utilize. Making more build orders viable isn’t something only pros utilize.

This doesn’t actually say anything. Can you come up with an example of a change that benefits no one but the most top players?