UD imba, really needs a nerf

General Discussion
1

UD imba, really needs a nerf.
Haha, UD is truly race strong. Check out last night’s Warcraft Super League match - in a UD mirror Happy fell 1-3 to Laby despite having no racial advantage whatsoever.

2025年8月10日（CN）：
120 3:0 Starbuck
Happy 3:0 Sok
Laby 3:0 Lyn
Blizzard, take a look! This is the patch you rolled out—each and every patch has favored the Undead (UD). Yet you never even play Warcraft 3 yourself; you only listen to advice from European streamers like Remo and Neo, and only take suggestions from noob players in the European community. Now the game’s balance has completely collapsed.

We acknowledge that Happy is an incredibly skilled player with commendable sportsmanship. However, the game’s racial balance has collapsed, leading to less exciting matches.

Those familiar with the European community know that balance patches are now mainly based on feedback from Europe, often from casual 4v4 players with limited competitive insight.

Happy even directly communicated with Blizzard’s balance team, suggesting changes like tower-protected Undead expansions, which were accepted. European Undead casters like Remo and Neo also had multiple patch suggestions adopted.

As a result, the Undead race is now extremely strong—fastest expansion, strong AoE healing—largely thanks to their influence.

But honestly, European players (other than Happy) lack competitive edge and understanding of the game. There’s virtually no competitive scene in Europe right now.

Meanwhile, Asia thrives with leagues like Korea’s WSB and China’s various tournaments. Warcraft III is truly being carried forward in Asia.

So what has Europe really contributed? They rely on hearsay to make balance changes. If you can’t balance properly, leave it to Asia. Let the professionals do their job. Asian players and casters understand the game far better.

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Version 2.0.3 PTR Build 23051
Version 2.0.3 PTR Build 23051
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Haha, maybe as long as UD can continue to win, no matter what race the opponent is, it should be weakened :rofl:

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ud is sure not a weak race, but if you can’t beat your opponent, it is recommended to consider your own technical problems.

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4

I don’t think it’s reasonable to watch two people play one set and go “UD IMBA!!!”

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5

Last night’s UD mirror match saw Happy lose 1-3 to Laby, with no racial advantage at play.
Just watching the gameplay and the flow of the match makes it clear—it wasn’t nearly as easy as when playing against NE or Orc, huh…
This indirectly shows that UD is imba. Besides, looking at the final racial rankings, the top three spots are all taken by UD players.

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UD won vs UD? Its time to nerf UD again. We cant have UD winning.

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I think the point is that UD players tend to lose only to other UD players, which, to some extent, seems to hold true within the closed environment of the superleague. At the moment, UD’s win rate against HU is around 80% (i think), and their win rate against ORC exceeds 90%. So far, Happy and Laby have only been defeated by other Undead players.

While these numbers are not an absolute reflection of balance—due to the small sample size and the significant impact of players’ current form—they do suggest that UD is currently the strongest race. HU and NE seem reasonably balanced, but ORC is performing very poorly.

In my view, the heavy armor buff had a much greater impact than intended in the early/mid game. It benefits ghouls, skeletons, and beetles by increasing their effective HP (particularly against HH and water elementals). This effect synergises with Coil healing and the Undead’s natural regeneration, both of which become about 11% more effective on ghouls when facing ranged attacks—precisely the case in the early game versus ORC, or against water elementals or rifle pushes.

I also believe UD’s fast expansion is far too strong: it’s extremely fast and very cheap. The UD base is already the strongest in the game, and this advantage naturally extends to their expansions. It’s somewhat reminiscent of when HU could call militia at an expansion—this feels, to some extent, like the same situation.

I think the current build time for an expansion is fine; I want UD to be able to fast expand. However, it might be worth increasing the cost of their natural defences. One possibility could be to make blight regeneration available only from a Necropolis, forcing the Undead to build one at some point in the expansion. Another option would be to reduce the food provided by upgraded towers from 10 to 6 or even 4. This change would require UD players to construct additional ziggurats early on, making their expansions more expensive to fortify.

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8

This is an extremely profound point. And i just realized that UD always wins vs UD. Its nerfing time.

Thats not true. Human base is the strongest. Arcane tower makes it so that heroes have to evacuate, milita pulling ,and the ability to upgrade armor and health of buildings. Second best base is orc as burrows have the same dps as a tower for free and they will have multiple burrows shooting. Third best is NE. Try attacking into ne base when they have free healing with moonwells and buildings killing you, ur dead. UD base is easily the weakest.

No. It shows that skilled players pick UD. If UD was the strongest there would be more UD players. Why is there 3 ud in top 10 and still only 3 UD in top 50? I guess the professional players playing for money forgot to pick the OP race.

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9

I mean in a mirror match your statistical chance of winning before any skill differences is exactly 50%…

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When a race is too strong, one of the first indicators is that players of that race win most of their matches against other races and lose only in mirror matchups. The fact that this is happening in the superleague may suggest that UD is strong—at least at 2700+ MMR. Of course, there may be other explanations for this, but it remains a strong possibility.

There’s a reason for the saying: “never fight on an UD base.” Even if militia is strong, you can’t call militia at an expansion—yet UD expansions still benefit from blight regeneration. The ice tower is one of UD’s strongest advantages, especially at the 2700+ MMR level, where players retarget frequently. Perhaps at 2000 MMR your point holds true, but at the very top level, everyone knows UD has the strongest base in the mid/late game. HU peasants are far too vulnerable, especially in mid/late, where losing 400–500 gold worth of them can happen in an instant.

Your point about the top 10 and top 50 players is valid. However, balance is not the same across all skill levels. UD may be weak in the 2000–2700 MMR range (wc3champions MMR) but strong at 2700+ MMR—that’s not a contradiction. Balance changes can be targeted to different levels of play. Adjusting the attack rate of ice towers, for example, would mostly affect high-level players (perhaps 2400+ MMR), changes to ghouls would impact mostly top players, since ghouls require strong micro and are rarely used effectively by lower lvl players, who rely mostly on fiends.

Returning to the point about expansions: an UD expo with one ice tower costs 475 gold and 280 wood. A HU expo, with a power build of four peasants (which usually results in similar timing), costs 657 gold and 369 wood. That’s a huge difference in the early game. A fully fortified UD expo with one ice tower and two nerubians costs 1,065 gold and 460 wood, while a HU expo with four towers (arguably five are needed for full defense) and three farms costs around 1,197 gold and 639 wood—again a massive gap, especially in lumber.

Granted, in these comparisons, the HU expo provides +12 food capacity, while the UD expo provides +10, but that is not so much. Also, UD expansions are somewhat more vulnerable to being canceled—but with far less overall risk. If the HU expansion is canceled, it’s usually GG. In contrast, canceling a UD expansion once often just resets the game to even.

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Yes, of course, the win rate for UD vs. UD is naturally 50%. The key point is that UD players are hardly losing to other races in the Super League so far. As far as I know, 120 has lost to NE, and that’s it.

I’d argue it’s still too soon to draw conclusions from this tournament. We’re only at about 60% of the regular season. It’s probably better to wait until the full regular season has played out before making a complete analysis. There’s a chance that the UD–HU matchup could become closer as pro players make a few strategic adjustments. Maybe Lyn and Focus can show that ORC is stronger than current numbers suggest. Let´s see.

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And tha’ts a sentiment I’d agree with. We need more stats to come to any conclusions as well as pinning down specific issues that other matchups are facing.

I also appriciate the fact you’re acknowlding that some issues may only appear at certain levels of play.

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They key point being players, as in plural. We have 3 ud players in all of professional warcraft so stop trying to make it seem like there is something significant going on here. Its not.

Secondly, OP made this thread because happy lost for the first time to laby in like 4 years or something. So then you guys run off with your logic of ud players only losing to other ud which might hold for 10,000 datapoints, but make it seem like its the actual reality with 1 datapoint sparsely collected over several years and hundreds of games. Yes, if there were 1k undead players that all had a 90% winrate vs the 3 other races clearly the race would be op, but thats not whats happening at all, stop implying anything like that.

You are right, its a huge difference. Especially since the powerbuilt town hall comes up a full minute (54 seconds to be exact) before the haunted gold mine. A full minute of mining is 600 gold. If anything the cost of power building like this should be will into the thousands of gold. Its absurdly overpowered currently.

I love how you arbitrarily slap on more and more hu buildings until the cost of your self defined “fully fortified“ base exceeds that of the ud as if that proves anything. I could do the same non sequitor but its just a pointless exercise that is absolutely meaningless.

Hu expands with impunity versus all races because their expansions are so strong,free and easy to setup. Ud will counter expand because its the only hope they have to survive versus hu. Hu dictates the match and can decide to go 1 base and just cancel the ud player. Its completely imbalanced because humans have such a overpowered expo.

Whats the logic here. Human 1 base vs ud 1 base is human favored. I know a lot of hu players get so accustomed to playing with the overwhelming advantage of having 2 bases versus 1 that they forget that hu has the most cost effective heros and units and will through sheer gold efficieny out scale anyone. Its a gg if the hu cant get their expo up and the ud can but vice versa is also true. And it is the case that HU has a far easier time getting and keeping their expansion up so if that scenario occurs its because of big missplays by the arch mage player. Its basically impossible to just outright kill the town hall in construction like it is with the haunted gold mine. You just send a footie and water ele and its dead with no counterplay.

Dont get me started on the massive buffs that hu disproportionately got last patch. Footman are already the best early game unit but got even stronger. If that wasnt enough they have such an easy time now to transition into knights which are easily the best t3 melee unit.

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Watching the match, UD mirror looks miserable with Coil Nova destroyer. Anything that isn’t magic immune seems to get bodied by either the destroyers or nova. Also the core armies being unable to interact with each other seems like an issue.

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HU expansions build faster, but you need to clear the entire creep camp before starting them. With UD, you can begin constructing the Haunted Gold Mine even before you start creeping—at least on some maps; on others, you may prefer to place the ziggurat first.

Also, I didn’t arbitrarily add more HU buildings to the comparison. If you think about it a minute, a Town Hall plus three farms equals 30 supply, which is the same as three ziggurats.

Finally, I agree that late Tier 3 HU is very strong. However, it’s also very, very expensive. UD reaches its power spike much earlier, which is why, at the pro level, in a 1-base vs. 1-base scenario (without early-game expansion attempts), UD is favored despite HU’s strong Tier 3. On the other hand, in a 2-base vs. 2-base scenario, HU may be favored, since that situation—when on equal footing—usually allows HU to reach late Tier 3 comfortably.

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Yes, I watched the gameplay, all games are the same. Very exciting! Undead has no variety of tactics. One mistake - and that’s it, the game is lost (even if you were in favor for half the game). One missed coil, and you can lose.

Same thing in games with other races. Only hero focus allows undead to survive. No other tactics. This means that the race was killed to the ground.

Hammering with liches and dessys is a very interesting spectacle.

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I want to directly delete the damn race of undead, haha. This race should not exist in the game Warcraft because there have been too many discussions about it in recent years. We need to say goodbye to these things completely, haha

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Sorry to be blunt but it genuinely doesn’t get more pathetic than calling UD imba because a UD player beat another UD in mirror for the first time ever in a tournament series between them, breaking a 21 match win streak. I don’t think anybody else in that tournament had a record that bad against Happy up to that point. There’s nothing but a respectable triumph in him overcoming that barrier.

If anything this more than anything shows that Labyrinth has just been genuinely playing incredibly well and is not being carried by his race, proving himself capable of winning matches against the very best players even when the scales are absolutely inarguably even, which in turn is really an argument against UD being imba, and instead just an argument for the players being that good.

Edit: Worth mentioning that it also remains UD mirror is one of Happy’s two best matchups along with his UD vs NE, with both of these being significantly ahead of his vs HU and vs ORC, so pretending there’s something going on like “oh surprise he suddenly has it hard” is just plain utterly wrong.

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Let’s just wait until the next tournament where Happy cremates Laby as usual, that’s all.

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False. UD has four viable starting heroes against HU (map-dependent). No other race enjoys that luxury—maybe NE vs. HU comes close, but that’s about it. Granted, in the Super League, DK-first seems to have a negative win rate vs. HU, but the other three starting heroes all have positive win rates in that matchup. And this isn’t just a 2700+ MMR phenomenon—if you check w3champions, CL-first, DL-first, and DK-first all have positive win rates vs. HU. The only one with a negative win rate on ladder is Lich-first, at around 48.5%.

This doesn’t mean UD is imbalanced—it simply shows that UD has a wide variety of viable strategies across different skill levels. What you’re claiming is just incorrect.

Additionally, UD can play either one-base or fast expansion strategies—at least against HU, UD, and NE (again, map-dependent). I’m not sure UD is strong enough to require a nerf, but it definitely doesn’t lack strategic variety. That may have been true back in 2015, but not anymore. What you’re saying is simply false: either you haven’t watched enough games, or you don’t understand that opening with Lich-first on one base is a completely different approach from opening CL-first and going for a fast expansion.

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