The wind rider of orc should be nerfed

General Discussion
21

Jack’s logic, from my understanding, is along the lines of “Can these changes be considered justifiable and not something that can be nullified through the application of different tactics or putting a more skilled player in the same situation? If not, then there should be no issues with this.”

People place too much weight on the opinions of those on things they themselves have not experienced in the same way as those other people have. Pro tactics are not something that you can simply copypaste and expect success with and this extends to balance discussions. A mixture of personal experiences and critical analyses of both your own gameplay and that of pro players is required and the vast majority of people do not have the self-reflective ability nor desire to achieve this focus and lack of bias. Sure, Jack is sometimes wrong and it can take a while for him to realize it, but once he does he owns up to it.
Unlike some people I could name…

There’s a flaw in your own words there.

That’s the kicker. Regular players input also matters, even if that of pros is taken with less proverbial salt compared to them.
So to say that regular players need to be disregarded in terms of balance discussion is a terrible idea. Even if it’s a balancing act of pros vs casuals at, say, 80/20 split in terms of “importance” or “weight”, by getting rid of the casuals input you ironically end up getting rid of ~80% of all the feedback. That is a massive drop and all good decisions are based on as much information as possible. If 80% of the playerbase want Goblin Sappers nerfed but the 20% that are pros say “no, do this other thing instead”, you’re probably going to see a mixture of the two, combined with any analyses you’ve done of matches alongside this data.

1 Like
22

Weaken the Orc? You’ve got to be kidding me. Mountan King hits them like butter. Happy regularly beats the eagle with great force, even in the final 0:3 You must be kidding me!

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23

Focus game wyverns on UD!

24

Except… that isn’t my logic at all. I’ve never said or suggested they should never make changes. But we need clear and obvious patterns of evidence to make good changes.

You can’t just look at one game where one pro trounced another with windriders and go “OP NERF BAT NOW!”. You have to analyze the situation using data from a large number of games. Does mass windriders actually have a high win rate? you can’t tell that from one or a few games.

The point all along has been that you need data- you can’t just cry OMG PRO GOT REKT BY WINDRIDERS NERF NOW. Prove to the court that this Orc strategy has a consistently high win rate and then I’ll be with you on making changes. But basing your opinion on one pro getting trounced one time (which is all i’ve seen you mention) is not going to produce good balance changes.

Your argument is akin to watching one game where a Master Yi gets fed in League of Legends, and then crying that he’s OP when he one shots everybody.

Further on the balance topic: There are lots of things that pros don’t use at all, because they already have strategies that work. That doesn’t automatically mean the things they’re not using are bad, and in fact they might even be OP at low levels of play. If we only looked at pros exclusively when making balance changes, a lot of broken things that pros simply don’t even look at could get ignored in a balance update when in fact they really need adjustments.

2 Likes
25

As I see everybody thinks that your wind rider and bat nerfing suggestions are bad. Just because once one pro lost to another pro, does not mean that we need to patch and ruin the game, and I mean the Orc race.

Is exactly the same reasoning when you said : NERF poor attack less WISPS. Wow …

2 Likes
26

See one of the things here is pros will just find strategies that are effective and use them. But they don’t necessairly try every possible strategy, just like most of us don’t. Once they find a solid, reliable tactic they tend to stick to what works. But that doesn’t mean that the thing that worked is broken, nor does it mean the things they don’t use are bad.

Balance has to be done by looking at data. You can’t just watch someone kick someone else’s butt and assume that their strategy is busted and needs to be nerfed- whether it’s a pro or not. Data driven decision making is how you make better balance.

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27

It’s beyond broken, as always was. You can’t transition to Fiends like that. It takes quite a lot of time, and Wind Riders actually deal insane amount of damage to the fiends, when they have the poison upgrade. That’s why UD players try with gargs and Destro, but it’s lame as s**** and super hard, unless your name is Happy, and even him can’t deal with that a lot of the time, and this is against lesser skilled players.

But the broken thing is the bats. They should absolutely not do AOE damage, and that 600 damage is too much. Also the range they become invulnerable it’s too much. There shouldn’t be any invulnerability.
This strats against UD is completely broken for ages.

29

Batriders commit suicide. They have to deal a lot of damage to be worth it–which is one of several reasons why suicidal units are hard to balance.

Maybe you could argue that Batriders should have an air attack instead of a suicide ability, but while Batriders have that ability, it does need to deal a lot of damage.

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30

Stating this doesn’t make it true. You need data.

In order for batriders to work they have to do enough damage to justify the guaranteed lost resources from building them. They do need to be more expensive than a unit that doesn’t suicide, or a limit on what they can be used against, otherwise there would be no reason to build anything else. In this cases, a batrider has to kill or severely weaken multiple units at once to generally justify the resources spent on them.

1 Like
31

I agree that they are hard to balance, and straight away they are bad design unit. Such thing are very often either straight up OR/Broken or not viable at all.
They are a big problem for UD players, when they are massed with Wind Riders, as you could easily lame. Combine them with either TC stomp on UD heroes or Hex, and it’s game over, if the Orc player is 2-3 levels below you.
This strat is not just lame, but straight up broken.
Bats essentially reign the sky, and you can’t counter them with any air units.
Again for me the best way they to be balanced, is that jump they do and that they essentially become invulnerable and you can’t attack them. This should have never been in the game.

And 2 bats, are 4 food, and cost 320/80.
They kill Destroyer straight away, when Destroyer cost 300/85 and it’s 5 supply.
And they also do splash damage.
And Orcs get full XP, and you are essentially left with no units.

They kill Gargs straight away.
And Gargs are 175/30, which essentially cost more than Bats.

In order to counter that strat you need to go for Ted Fieds build, which is super slow for kreeping, and Orc can just counter that strat, as they have huge tech lead advantage and can see what you are going.

And you can’t switch to Fiends to counter Wind Riders, as you needs tons of Fiends, and Orc already will have huge numbers, as they again have a huge Tech lead.
And Shadow Hunter literally takes control of the map, until you are T3 late.
And Orc can just go expand and it’s over for you.
Orc can also lame with ease.
Bats should have never ever also doing Siege damage, and have Liquid Fire for buildings.
Go play UD and see how fun this strat is to deal with it.

Even Happy is very often losing to this strat against million time lesser players than him.

Having good anti-air unit is essentially for every race, but essentially having a unit that straight up delete any air unit is beyond broken.

It’s 600 damage + 140 AOE damage. It’s beyond insane for 2 food 160 gold unit.
Fun like pretty much every Orc unit in the game.
But why do i even bother with this broken game at this point. Blizzard have never known how to balance a game properly.

32

keep 2tier hall and make crypt one more n make many fiend