Blizzard, I would like to thank you for your efforts to correct the imbalance between the items. You nerfed the book of the dead, the lightning shield wand, the sentry ward, the greater mana potion, and the energy pendant. And you removed the speed boots and the experience tome from the default creep camp drop table. And you buffed the shadow cloak, the protection rings, the scourge bone chimes and the stormwind lion horn. And you adjusted the crystal ball’s level. All these changes were excellent. But I’m going to go further here and make new suggestions.
You buffed the protection rings, but it seems that it was not enough to correct the imbalance between the permanent items. You will be amazed if you know how frustrated the professional and competitive players become every time the ring+3 or the haste gloves come out instead of the claws+6 or the nobility circlet. You can see how bad the rings and the haste gloves are compared to other items by looking at the ‘DPS’ page and the ‘EHP’ page in Liquipedia.
Let’s talk about the gloves first. The claws+6 increase the DPS of lvl1 blademaster by 17.1%, while the gloves increase by only 10.4%. The difference narrows as the hero level goes up, but the claws’ superiority does not change. For heroes with poor basic DPS, such as archmage, the gap is even greater. The claws+6 increase the DPS of lvl1 AM by 25%, while the gloves increase by only 11%. I believe gloves should be buffed from 15% to 25%. Or at least to 20%. Even if it’s 25%, the claws+6 are still better items for lvl1 AM than gloves.
And in the case of the protection rings, it’s so hard to balance them. The offensive items are much more preferred than the defensive items in many situations. Even if the relative(%) values are higher, EHP items are considered less important than DPS items by the competitive players. But the rings usually have even lower values compared to the claws in the same level(Except some strength heroes who are about level 4 or higher). For example, the claws+6 increase the DPS of lvl3 death knight by 17.1%, but the ring+3 only increases the EHP of lvl3 death knight by 14.9%. And the claws+9 increase the DPS of lvl5 tauren chieftain by 20.5%, but the ring+4 only increases the EHP of lvl5 tauren chieftain by 19.5%. How can we want a ring rather than claws now? I’d rather all the rings be deleted. If you don’t want to get rid of all the rings, I suggest you just buff only the ring+3 to ring+4, and get rid of the rest. Otherwise, I think there should be a major overhaul of these rings. I hope you know the rings are still too bad not only for me but also for most professional players.
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Good arguments in your post. However it is worth discussing if a little imbalance in terms of item performance is ok. We all know there are drops which are simply better than others. For most races, Brilliance or Endurance Aura from a red camp are the best drops in the game.
Does that mean we should suddenly change the numbers of Help of Valor for example? Or should we maybe get rid of the +4/+4 item from Red camp and instead add a +4/+4/+4 item? If we were to do something like this, Orc with blademaster would benefit way too much as they are already the best at sniping Ogre Lords and permanent items benefit the Blademaster the most in the entire game. In my opinion, we should accept that some items are simply better than others and that is part of the game. Even if we change some numbers.
If we were to buff all Rings by +1, this would still stay the same. Rings don’t help you to creep faster, they don’t make you deal more damage and don’t make it easier to kill units and gain exp, so it doesn’t help you win the game. Its only beneficial if your hero gets attacked.
There is one thing I agree with, that is Claws +6 on Archmage. We all know UD vs HU matchup is all about timings and the earlygame if UD does not choose to play Crypt Lord expand and instead focuses on harassing an early HU expansion. An Archmage with 25% more damage is a gamechanger at that point. Especially with the recent nerf to Skeleton HP, this does make it a lot easier for the human - if he gets claws.
So how about we suggest the following: Nerf all Claw bonus damage by 1. Items which increase hero damage are superiour to Rings at pretty much all points in the game. This is going to stay the same, but the difference will be less. I also like your suggestion to slightly buff gloves of Haste.
And something else I wanted to talk about while we talk about rings: The Crypt Lord spiked carapace passive. Right now its +3 armor and a pitiful melee damage reflect. This passive is one of, if not the worst in the game. Especially after buffs to Rings.
This passive needs to be buffed. It does not compete with Bash, or Critical Strike or Evasion or Drunken Brawler in any way. The return damage should be higher and it should grant much more armor.
Thanks for your comment. But even now, there are many opinions that the HvU is in favor of undead. If you just nerf the claws while leaving the rings intact, human will be at a greater disadvantage. In the typical HvU, AM beats DK hard with his normal attacks, whereas DK runs away and aims for coil steals. And the claws have a higher relative(%) value when worn by AM than by DK. What I really want is to remove all the rings, not to buff all rings by +1.
p.s. I totally agree with your opinion on CL.
I disagree with the basics your analasis.
In your analasis you only compare the effect of items on EHP and DPS changes of hero standard attacks.
I think your statement of item inbalance holds for mainly ranged heroes (AM, FS, Keeper, Lich etc) and for DH and Blade.
But the dps for other hero’s isn’t determined by standard attacks, but also by spell damage.
For example the mountain king get’s most dps from his thunder clap, not from his melee hits. So I think at level 3 a ring of protection is much more preferred than a claw + 6, even though in your analasis a claw is better than a ring.
Heroes who rely on spell damages scale very well with items that increase their durability. Also you have to take into account what the general role of a hero is on the battlefield.
I think the items are resonably balanced, considering the changes from early to mid and late- gameplay.
Edit: added role on the battlefield
HU vs UD is not in UD’s favour. HU vs UD is a timing based matchup since UD is the most timing based race. (This is of course by design. I do not agree with this design and I think UD should be able to play on T2 without going t3 like any other race. But Blizzard seems very stubborn about this. They even nerfed Frost Wyrms and Necromancers are still a joke and they abandoned the last rework without trying harder. UD is the only race which has to rush t3 in every game because Blizzard locked dispel behind t3 and expensive upgrade and also made UD the most Orb-reliant race in the entire game. UD was never able to play without t3. Maybe this has changed now with Crypt Lord expansion, but before the last patch this was a fact.)
The game is mostly decided in the earlygame if HU expands and UD harasses. If UD doesn’t harass, HU will simply roll over UD with either masses of Knights + Gyros or mass Tanks.
In tournaments we only see 2 UD players who have great success because of how well they play the earlygame, that is Happy and 120. And still Infi was able to beat Happy 3:0 in a best of Series, Sok aswell which was unexpected, but shows that even a weaker player (on paper) can win this matchup so its not imbalanced.
Now Happy stopped playing Chinese Tournaments and there is only 120 left. You cannot argue about imbalance of a matchup if its only 1 player. Lyn has not lost a single Best of Series against Human for 8 months in a row. Only very recently he lost vs TH000. Then you have Lawliet, who has been dominating the Elf vs Human matchup thanks to his Warden play and basically inspired the Elf playerbase to stop with Keeper and go back to the Warden against Human. He showed that the matchup isn’t imbalanced, you just need to switch your playstyle. Just like how Lyn did with Orc against Human. And Moon is continually defeating Orcs and makes the matchup look horrible for Orc. But in reality, it simply comes down to the fact that these players are as good as they are. And no one else can replicate what they do.
Just because Infi and Sok have beaten Happy, can that be a enough proof that the HvU is not in undead’s favor? I don’t mean to say human CAN’T beat undead, but it’s certain undead has an advantage over human, given the professional scene overall. Just look at the three tier2 1.32.6 tournaments that have been held so far.
ⓐ CC Master Cup 3, H:U = 0:2
ⓑ AWL 2020 2, H:U = 2:5
ⓒ Douyu Yule Cup 5, H:U = 3:4
Total H:U = 5:11, human winrate 31.25%
Even if we exclude Meteor’s games of CC Master Cup 3 because he isn’t a very good human player, H:U is 5:9. But anyway I don’t want to prolong the debate about this matchup. Anyway, not much time has passed since the last patch, and we have to wait and see the impact of the 10 HP decrease in skeleton warriors.
Thank you for providing statistics. Now this is something we can talk about.
5:9 result is still fine. At that point you should look into the individual games. As we all know HU vs UD comes down to earlygame a lot. As you have pointed out, a game where HU finds Claws+6 is completely different from a game where HU does not. And then you have even more item drops, like on Northern Isles where you could find a Chrystal ball on the expansion camp vs other arguably much more useful items.
One thing thats great about the new patch is the variety it brings to the matchup because of the long overdue Crypt Lord changes. So far we have not seen Chinese or Koreans using the Crypt Lord much, sadly. However european Undeads have experimented much more. And Orcs have already adapted aswell, coming up with Headhunter playstyles against Crypt Lord FE.
If you do not like the current HU expand and UD harass situation, then the fact that UD finally got their own viable summon hero means we will see both players expand, or only the UD player expand and human player harass. We saw both in the ESL casted by Back2warcraft and every single Crypt Lord game, both against Human and Orc has been very exciting.
rings of protection are still the worst drops for their tier.
the high tier +4 +4 items (helm of valor or whatever) should be reduced in item level by 1 or even 2, they are absolutely awful for current tier.
Once again why do you care about that? Go custom games and play Lordaeron the aftermath for quality strategy gaming.
It’s true that +4 +4 items are worse than aura items in the same level(5), but it’s dangerous to lower their level to 3 or 4. BM with the valor helm is obviously more powerful than BM with the Quel’Thalas boots. And needless to say, the courage medallion is way better than the belt.
I don’t know anything about that. I didn’t know until I saw your comment. I’m not interested except the melee games.
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Melee is outdated, boring and pointless it alwas was like that, custom games is the reason wc3 lived for so long.
Then don’t comment irrelevant things in my post dealing with improvements to the melee game. Why are you bothering me? Just go to a post looking for a good custom game and recommend Lordaeron whatever.
As someone who plays alchemist a lot I disagree I like finding the new buffed rings for him as an early drop. Also finding claws when you go bm dh lich is like Christmas fun and good for game. I watch many pro games and the better players tend to win even when they get rings and bad stat items vs good auras and claws doesn’t matter that much.