UD balance (with Happy's and Grubby' comments)

General Discussion
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There isn’t much time left for Blizzard to test things for Reforged. This thread aims to summaries changes that many of us look forward to seeing there. There are multiple threads on this forum describing ideas to improve UD. Each of us can write a small wishlist of (conservative) changes we eagerly expect to see in Reforged. No need to explain them.

Grubby’s comments on UD (3h31m50s): Twitch

Happy’s comments on UD (4h17m45s):

He also discussed UD heroes (see 4h43m45s).

My wishlist:
Frost Wyrm. Reduce food to 6, build time to 60s, adjust price and hp accordingly.

Crypt Lord. Remove 1 second of air duration for Impale.
Carrion beetles.
(1) When Crypt Lord is summoned for the first time, he should have 2 beetles summoned at the same time with him. Otherwise, there is no way to go for Crypt Lord first.
(2) Make beetles’ armor be related to the level of spiked carapace.
(3) Burrow upgrade researched for fiends should be expanded to beetles (not granted to them for free). Increase beetles’ hp regeneration when burrowed.

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Undead really needs its units to have a small hp regen buff and movespeed buff while removing the proportionate amount from DK aura. - Grubby

I cannot agree more.

Same with everything else he said like Frost wyrm food to 5 or 6 while lowering everything else (dmg/hp/build time etc)

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i agree with this too, would allow for other heroes besides dk

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you cannot make undead not use dk without actually killing it.

fiends are the only stable fighting unit for undead, and fiends highly rely on deathknight.

its not the aura that makes dk so crucial for undead, its coil. just think through what would win more games. dk with coil + deathpact or dk with aura + deathpact. ofc aura helps, but not being able to coil removes several winning conditions.

it would help to have a higher base movement speed on fiends, but does that win any matchups when you remove coil out of the equation? no, it doesnt vs raiders, it doesnt vs dh+dryads, it doesnt vs mk + rightclick and hypothetically you’d lose any undead mirror without coil hands down, even if your units moved with aura lvl 3 speed.

im not saying that its a bad idea to shift some power from aura to the units - but its not gonna make UD choose a different 1st or 2nd hero than the deathknight.

thats solely based on the fact that undead has very little viable units and strategies, and those run best with dk lich.

now lets talk about various 1st heroes for undead:

dreadlord is really good right now, the problem he has is the weak undead t2 for fast expo and that undead only has two melee units aside from skeletons, that both are pretty bad for vampiric aura plays. abominations are damage sponges without real damage output except for disease cloud. and ghouls are outright bad when dreadlord reaches lvl2 aura.
while vampiric aura is insanely strong on paper, its actually not for undead, because undead has no units that actually benefit from it.

lich sees some cheese play in mirror, vs orc and vs human - its not really a good 1st option in general - but if lich gets played, its with ghouls. except for early towerrush vs orc. its really niche and one-trick and only vs ud the lich 1st extends into mid and lategame.

cryptlord actually has some nice answers to some undead issues, but in the end he’s a mediocre pick for some reasons. the beetles are a nice frontline for fiend play, impale (after it gets some fixes regarding the knockup dmg mitigation) has a nice synergy with fiends aswell. but the question arises: why bother? so you get alot of cheap summons with a pretty beefy healthpool, a hero, that has really strong stats (cryptlord hits hard and tanks alot) and a potentially strong CC spell but in the short and long run you lose against anything that dk+fiends actually wins against. so, why not use crypt lord early strength for a fast tech? this works really well, with the caveat undead doesnt have anything worth fast teching for.
there was a german pro undead playing cryptlord dk fiends fasttech to wyrms with some gimmicks to make it work back in the day when orc still played fs tc raider wyvern. this worked insanely well, because orc had nothing to cope with the early wyrms - but then orc found out bm + shadowhunter solves alot of issues, and hex instantly killed that strat, because its impossible to have fast tech wyrms AND destroyers.

to summarize the above:

undead plays dk lich fiends destroyers because its the only strat that doesnt screw over undead at one point and has alot of key strengths combined.

dreadlord is really good, but has no synergy with the undead units. imagine orc having dreadlord. oh boy.

cryptlord offers some unique features, but his strengths are nothing undead could capitalize on.

its really not an issue with the heroes, its an issue with the race’s units and how one-dimensional undead is because of that.

now onto some potential fixes for undead:

  • give cryptlord beetles some resistance against dispel.

  • buff ghouls early with one armor - increase gold cost to 125g. this strengthens the synergy with dreadlord, because armor + lifesteal > health + lifesteal. also ghoul openers are stronger.

  • either move ghoul frenzy to t2 with weaker stats or give ghouls some spell resistance like archers have with the t3 upgrade.

  • fix gargoyle target acquisition for air targets like grubby suggested.

  • rework destroyers into a cheaper weaker anti caster / dispel unit with far less heavy air components. undead needs a cheaper way to dispel without going full commitment into the destroyer vicious cycle. may replace magic immunity with magic resistance (mountain giant). for those wondering what i mean with destroyer vicious cycle: destroyers are so expensive in food and gold that you cannot afford having that black blob flying around without mana, so you get more statues to absorb mana from and you also morph them and this goes on until the sky is darkened by a mana- and useless black flock that cannot be killed (undead mirror).

  • may move statues to the temple of the damned.

  • frost wyrms need to be more accessible, since they need to do what destroyers did - provide magic damage. frost wyrms offer alot of potential for tweaking. reduce food and resource costs for weaker stats, do some dps balancing with attack speed vs attack damage, the slow effect, the splash damage. im sure, we can get the wyrm where it needs to be.

  • revert the unholy frenzy change. the new spell is horrible. it needs to be targetable and t2. frenzy solves alot of issues for several units. frenzy helps gargs overcome strong flying anti air, frenzy makes wyrms alot stronger, frenzy solves the vampiric aura issue with abominations.

  • buff meatwagons so their armor can be upgraded and they should also get a considerable amount of health. (this goes for orc cata aswell)

  • add a new mechanic to the sacrifical pit - acolyte soul “ammo” system - somewhat like the meatwagon with its corpses. one acolyte gives one soul charge to the sacrifical pit when sacrificed and the sacrifical pit gets some new abilities.
    one would be “train shade - costs 1 soul” - another could be “refresh statue mana - costs 2 souls” or some sort of healing salve mechanic per soul, so undead can heal neutral heroes and units without statues. you can do alot with it. this makes the sacrificial pit a more useful building, makes the sacrifices a more central part of the undead race and has alot of potential to fix some specific problems undead has.

what these changes are designed to do:

help the ghoul openings, which enable different heroes, because fiends really only go with dk or cryptlord. also ghouls dont fall off a cliff 5 mins into the game.

help the cryptlord play with better fast tech options (frenzy wyrms or necrowagon for example), that get less easily obliterated, because dispel is now way more readily available and you dont need slaughterhouse to support casters with statues.

better ghouls and frenzy abominations have way better synergy with dreadlord.

in general we should see more mixed armies.

destroyers are a really unhealthy unit for the game - this change benefits everyone. undeads are not forced to play mass destroyers (vicious cycle) and others dont have to cope with the black plague. and destroyers can be played as supportive anti caster without going full commitment due to resource cost vs. dispel capability.

wyrms see more play, which really is a good thing.

statues in the temple and a more useful sacrificial pit could vastly improve undead flow and variety in unit comps.

better meatwagons help vs mass dryads and enable more reliable necrowagons.

possible issues:

  • strong ghoul rushes
  • frost wyrms might not be able to fill the role destroyers once did, which might makes it hard vs human fast expo and orc. but i really think opening alot of options for undead will eventually balance this out.
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I think u forgot that impale is a terrible spell overall right now same with Spiked Carapace and arguably beetles.

160 dmg for 100 mana… plus stupid lift of 1 sec CL HAS NO MANA POOL to use impale plus beetle. And Ulti if he reaches it.

Spiked carapace makes CL gain 7 armor which should be changed to a percentage of dmg from all sources. 10%/20%/30%

Right now you can easily get ring +3 +5 everywhere and CL gets ignored or ranged attacked so carapace should block all source dmg.

Beetles are dispellable weak early and consumer 30 mana per beetle. 140hp 7-9 dmg… WTF Some are saying they need spiked carapace at lvl 3 which is awsome but beetles need a lvl 1 and lvl 2 buff in reality.

Ghouls need magic resistance upgrade or hp upgrade so DL can use them. Then Abom as HAPPY said need collision size/ turn rate reduction and faster attack speed.

So DL can transition from DL Ghouls to Abom better and make it more of a legit strat.

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kinda proves my point about grubby. he really isn’t a brain when it comes to balance and such. Beetles undispellable? just so that it counters wisp detonate? wut. that does a lot more to the other races too.

I mean grubby was the one that said before the two major tourneys this summer that orc was weak…and the best orc in the world Lyn said on video that orc was probably the strongest race in the game with great diversity.

Grubby is def not the guy i turn to when it comes to asking how to balance undead. I think there are certain pros that have better ideas. Happy for sure is one I would listen to, because I think he understands mechanics of gameplay better than grubby. (ie. Grubby saying elf had an advantage vs ud pre major tournaments this summer…come patch and all - happy said it in his major win that he has no problem vs elf, and only vs orc.).

/rant off.

but I agree to revert necros…I kinda miss them the way they were…and his idea about Gargs may even sound kind of like a bug if anything with the AI…I’m sure gargs were intended to be used the way he explained for sure.

The problem with undead isn’t their units, buildings, or any of that. It’s literally that they are forced to use a DK first every game and soley depend on him and orb to win. That’s the problem. We see one or two compositions with the DK. Stuff would be a lot different if we saw more DL or Lich first play i’m sure. UD have been complaining about this for over a decade now though so not sure what the team really knows…since they’re brand new to this game.

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Buddy undead have alot of problems other than DK.

And coil is a main one but not the only one…

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Unlike Human or Orc, UD units need Unholy Aura to do anything. UD also has no staff to save units so playing without healing from DK is out of the Question. The dagger was a start but its a joke in its current iteration and way too weak.

Ghouls are already weak as it is, but without Unholy aura are abysmal units. This can be observed every time UD tries anything without DK, like Dreadlord expand.

Without DK you could never harass a human player because Crypt Fiends are too slow and would get picked off easily and obviously heal is lacking aswell. The Archmage would run them down and surround with Footmen, Blademaster and DH or Keeper would simply pick them off.

Aboms are useless without aura aswell, they are too slow and their collision size is too big so they end up blocking each other constantly. Just observe 4 Abominations and compare your observation with 4 Knights and 4 Bears.

As Grubby has suggested, UD units should be able to function without Unholy Aura. This would open up more first hero options. This can easily be done by giving all units a base regeneration and more movement speed and maybe adjusting the DK aura in return. Ghouls also need an upgrade to survivability. They don’t do anything in the current metagame with buffs to tons of AoE spells like stomp, clap, chain lightning, breath of fire, acid bomb, strong earlygame presence heroes like Keeper or buffs to all ranged units like Headhunters or Riflemen which easily focus down individual Ghouls.

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Abom need actual dmg capability.

Bears are strong right clickers with roar plus rejuv

Tauren aswell as you have endurance Aura usually and sometimes bloodlust or ancestral spirit.

Knights are fast and have sundering blades. And have good dps

Aboms have disease cloud and thts it they are trash compared to other tier 3 equivalents.

Worst collision size, terrible turn rate, clunky asfk.

Then they have a slow attack speed.

They keep blocking each other or get surronded in actual games.

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I think the DK is a core part of that problem though.

Undead are utterly dependent on them. Almost as much as they are dependent on Orb of Corruption. I think there needs to be a shift of power away from the DK and away from certain items/spells, and filtered back into the units themselves. This includes having clear access to necessary tools like Anti-air, Dispels, CC/Disables and Unit Health Regeneration.

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God I hate agreeing with you… But you have a point here. It feels like a good chunk of the UD kit has been hyper-focused on only a few units. Most of your toolkits are either in edge-case matchups or just trolling. Like how often do you see actually good UD players use their Meat Wagons, let alone Corpse Exhume? Or use Cannibalism in a fight? The power points of the race need to be re-distributed out from their core units. The hard part will be the simultaneous nerf’ing of the core powers, with proportional buffs to the others. I’m not good enough to say if Fiends themselves need a minor nerf down with all the other units rising in power, but I’d think that would need a close eye as the other changes come in.

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I don’t really like this. It creates a strong synergy, and synergies usually reduce flexibility. In this case, it means that if spikes+beetles is balanced, it will be very hard for spikes+impale or beetles+impale to not be underpowered unless impale is overpowered.

I also feel similar about burrow. If you see a player with beetles and beetle-burrow is linked to fiend-burrow, you will have a greater chance of guessing correctly that your opponent is going fiends.

If CL is UP, just increase some quantities until it’s not. Especially HP.

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The huge problem with UD is how there were supposed to be when they first came out is not healthy for the game.

Back in 2006 Frost Nova and Coil were much stronger. They didn’t deal reduced damage to heroes either. UD was simply having absurd hero nukes and crappy units. However since then its been nerfed several times so the only thing thats left right now are good hero nukes with awful units.

Its obvious that once you keep nerfing their biggest strengths, the weaknesses become more apparent.

Dispel being locked behind t3.5. You pay the most out of any race for dispel and now the Destroyer is a weak unit with a 160 damage dispel, the worst in the game.

All your units are useless without unholy aura. With no healing outside of DK you basically cannot move away from blight because any race will trade hitpoints, heal up and kill your units. The dagger is a joke and not worth the investment. UD has to rush to t3 immediately, its their only option and they are always short on ressources until around 50 supply.

Gargoyle Ai doesn’t even work properly so they are useless as anti-air.
Abom colission size is too big and their attack damage is too low or they don’t even get any attacks in.

Ghouls die instantly to anything and are walking exp tomes in the lategame. It doesn’t matter if they move twice as fast they are still going to die.

Frost Wyrms are almost never used and still got nerfed. Its like nerfing Tauren which would make no sense aswell.

Necromancers have no place in the game with their current abilities. If only they had dispel they would easily be used.

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Necromancers dont need frenzy actaully as sad as this sounds.

Easily dispelled and sacrifices units.

*Also Happy was saying that DL should be ranged as every race has 2 ranged hero. Should this be made?

For balance sake dispel is better even though it would be sad to see iconic frenzy gone.

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UD has a ton of issues that all need attention.

The biggest issue is the race design when it comes from tier 1 to tier 2. Let’s look at what you have:

  • Fiends
  • Ghouls
  • Gargoyles
  • Casters
  • Wagons
  • Statues

Of these, you only really have 4 combat units: Fiends, Ghouls, Gargoyles and Casters.

With Fiends you get the largest health pool of the 4 units. You also get anti-air capabilities with Web. You get a ranged attack that can focus fire and you get a 550 health that works better with level 3 Death Coil.

Ghouls are a 340 health fighter that must attack at melee range and cannot attack air. They are incredibly weak to hero spells.

Gargoyles are a 410 health air unit that attacks air with a melee attack and ground with a ranged attack. They die incredibly quickly to any ranged unit and are heavily countered by Orc Batriders and Human Flying Machines.

Necromancers would be the other choice here, but these guys require a ton of setup. You’ll need to get at least 2 upgrades to get them to make skeletons and they also need a Meat Wagon to provide corpses.

So of these 4 choices, Fiends are simply the way to go because they have so many advantages over the others. The biggest one is that they simply are the most durable at 550 health. This is important because it means you can fight a battle and lose very few or likely no Fiends, thus saving you money and denying experience. With Ghouls, you will always lose at least a few Ghouls due to their 330 health, how slow they move and how they have to attack up close at melee range. Why go through that trouble when you can keep your guys alive if you go Fiends? Gargoyles can be staved off with 1-2 turrets at home. They are incredibly hard-countered by Batriders and Flying Machines, yet they lack the power that makes them worth making. They do less damage than Fiends and they take longer to build than Fiends. And as said before, Necromancers and skeletons require a ton of setup to be used compared to Fiends.

So the conclusion here is that Fiends are simply the most effective choice in army composition based on their versatility and durability. Blizz needs to wake up and realize that going any other composition doesn’t make sense because you are opening up your army to glaring weaknesses that you wouldn’t face if you go Fiends. If you do go Fiends, you will 100% always go Death Knight. You go DK because he synergizes the best out of any hero with Death Coil healing and Unholy Aura speed. Fiends is what dictates DK use. This isn’t the issue however as units determining the hero is the case for other races as well such as casters dictate Archmage use. The issue is that there is no reason not to go Fiends. We need to buff the other units to make them have advantages over Fiends.

With that said, here’s what needs to happen. Ghouls need a way to mitigate damage as a low-health, melee range unit. “Healing” doesn’t do it because it doesn’t change the fact that they get blown up by hero spells. Speed seems to work best for Ghouls as it allows them to get into battle as well as get out of battle quicker. I suggest a speed upgrade for Ghouls at tier 2.

Gargoyles simply aren’t worth using because they are hard-countered way too hard. Batriders are simply broken in this game because they can get the kill and the other player usually has no way to respond to them. Flying Machines are the epitome of brokeness with a ranged, splash attack. I believe Gargoyles will always be disadvantaged, but at least what should be done is to increase Gargoyle ground attack from 19 to 21 so that their DPS is the same with Fiends.

Necromancers need to be reverted to how they were in 1.30. These changes have caused nobody to change from Fiends to Necromancers; they haven’t made Necromancers better. In fact, Necromancers have gotten worse; it hasn’t made Ghouls usable which was foolish thinking in the first place. Raise Dead needs to be the first spell so you can make quicker pushes to the enemy before they have their anti-spell and splash setup. It’s all about timing. Unholy Frenzy right now is utter crap. It was very easy to use at 50 mana and it buffed attack speed by 75%. You could even use it on low-health enemies. Now it’s some crazy expensive 175-mana spell that needs huge setup to work. Cripple was never needed by UD and it was okay being a tier 3 spell that you would cast on powerful armies that did not run dispel. Revert the Necromancer changes.

We should also look into Meat Wagons as a part of the Necromancer plan. Meat Wagons are so vital to the skeleton strategy that if they die, your entire strategy falls apart. A fair change to this would be to increase the speed of the Meat Wagon from 220 to 270. This is the same speed that Mortar Teams move at. I would also extend this buff to the Demolisher and Glaive Thrower. Siege units other than Mortar Teams are hardly used in this game. It would be great to see them used more and this buff will encourage that.

Finally as far as the Crypt Lord goes, the beetles are utter crap because you need to make 5 of them and they each need a corpse. It takes way too much time to setup and it’s way too easy to kill them. The easiest change you could do is to make it so that the beetles are stronger, but you can only have 3 of them. This would make beetles more durable and you wouldn’t need to have a ridiculously hunt for corpses because the beetles die so quickly. Again, I suggest reducing the maximum beetles from 5 to 3 and buff their stats accordingly.

So again, the bottom line I want to reiterate is that so long as Fiends will be used, the DK will always be used. To solve this issue, you have to make the other units worth using OVER the Fiend. When you do not go Fiend, you then open up the race into using non-DK heroes. For instance, when you go Ghouls and Gargs, you’ll probably want to go Dreadlord for Vampiric Aura. When you go Necromancers, you’ll likely to Lich to eat skeletons. It’s all about going non-Fiend.

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I agree with some stuff you said but not all.

For example you need to realize that gargoyles have bad unit AI. They cannot solely focus air units as they keep switching to ground targets and to micro each one of them to acquisition an enemy air unit is close to impossible. Their main problem is AI and as Happy and Grubby said they need a toggle (land only/air only) Its not really their DPS problem.

Beetle Suggestion is nice because im Crypt Lord fan. But I would also strongly suggest that his impale is buffed and that Carapace armor values be changed to percent from all dmg.

Meat wagons should move faster and have slightly higher hp thats solid.

All undead units that need faster base movespeed buffed while nerfing Unholy aura movespeed. So that if your running DL + Ghouls its a bit better.

Then yes Aboms need to be buffed big time and necro changes either reverted or them replacing frenzy with dispel.

And buff dagger again plz.

Animate Undead not raise worker units and last 15 sec longer and cost 40 mana less.

While MK clap and TC Stomp need to be nerfed to reduce their insane S tier presence.

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Bruh wtf is this long essay?

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The undead should be more rewarded for using their coolest unit: the undead dragon

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I can feel the challenge that developers face when they want to help UD gain variety in their gameplay. I thought about it too and read some of the old threads. So here I will try to summarize many posts already written on the forum.

We don’t want to change DK, fiends, statue, destroyers (because this path works for UD). We can take a look at DL, ghouls, necromancers (casters), shades.

Ghouls. Let’s agree that no matter what, they won’t be strong in late game (same is true for grunts and footies). To make them more viable in early-mid game they need:

(1) More starting hp, like 360 (5% extra) to survive 1 or 2 more extra hits. To balance it out, their attack rate can be reduced (5%) or similar.

(Ghouls’ fragileness was pointed by so many pro-gamers and so many people on the forum).

(2) Tier 2 frenzy upgrade. It should be more modest than current tier 3 upgrade. But it will give ghouls the speed they lack without Unholy Aura and attack rate to make use of vampiric aura. Of course, frenzy upgrade is primarily for ghouls to be impactful in combat.

(Again it is mentioned by pros and regular players that without frenzy ghouls are pretty much useless).

I think these two changes for ghouls would be a good start, a conservative approach to balance things out.

Dreadlord. Maybe this hero can become agility hero with less hp and more DPS? IDK.

Shades. Why shades? Well, it would be nice to give UD access to a second dispel. There are many ideas out there. One idea that I thought of, is that Sacrificial Pit could have a tier 2 upgrade for a shade to “detonate” and dispel the area. This dispel could be a “light” version, without affecting summoned units (looking similar to wisp’s detonation).

Necromancers. If we want UD to have Temple as an early alternative to the Slaughterhouse, the necromancers should provide some asymmetric “equivalent” to statues’ abilities which are indispensable for UD’s healing. That is why Necromancers should be reworked and they need:

(1) One of the tier 2 spells should provide healing. No idea how it should look like, possibly single-target, similar to priests’ heal.

(2) Necromancers should have toggle between summoning
two melee skeletons and two ranged skeletons (an option which they get later, after an upgrade). Right now, after upgrade, players are forced to get one ranged skeleton, even though they could prefer a melee one.

We all can see the Blizzard is trying to find a way for Necromancers to work and it’s tricky. Let’s hope they will not stop after 1.31, because it didn’t quite work out and Reforged release is a perfect opportunity to fix things.