UD vs HUM proposed changes for balance

PTR Discussion and Bug Report
1

Hi guys,

As we all know this is one of the two most problematic matchups and by statistics the most imbalanced (cannot find the link of the reddit thread with the statistic over all games played on w3champs). I have been a pro player on the original TFT and believe I am not talking out of my but with these.

As we know Blizz does not wish to issue big nerfs as they might potentially break other matchups. However, as a start we can try a few different small changes first. Here goes nothing:

  1. Castle build time reduced by 20-25 seconds. As we know one base play for human is not viable and they changes to the early game (skeleton nerf on PTR) shows Blizzard has realized the only way for human to go is through early expo.
    This change will make it so the paladin and staff/first few knights come out earlier, making the dreaded push of the UNDEAD a bit less effective.

  2. Rod of necromancy with 1 less charge. The 10 hp life is not enough as in my opinion the problem is that the undead comes with 4-6 skelies and calls 2 more thus killing too many peasants and slowing your T2 tech too much.Also the dagger now heals more and undead gets into a situation where he can both do a ton of damage to the peasants and heal a lot his DK (2 charges equal 1/2 of DK’s hp) . Having both of those items strong is a bit too much.

  3. Indirect buff of human - shredded price a bit reduced (20-30 wood less) as the human is the only race who gains a lot by getting early shredder and thus buffing his play after getting the expo. The shredder’s gold is irrelevant as gold is not an issue but rather wood (militia and all)

  4. Hawks’ attack speed slightly increased. The haws are great units on tier 2 vs undead as they have almost same damage as rifles and the undead is forced to loose some time on making web. Also the statues can be somewhat easily killed by the hawks in big numbers. The problem is hawks have the worst price-to-dps value in the game due to their awful attack speed. A small buff in speed can make them replace rifles in this matchup which are useless at the moment and just give the undead easy XP to level his absolutely immortal combo of heroes.

  5. Nerf to the dreadlord’s damage vs mechanical units. At current carrion swarm makes damage to mechanical but it would be good if the damage is reduced a bit as the DL one-shots gyros which are 100 gold each and that is more than ABSURD.

  6. DK must be nerfed a bit as a whole, reduced starting mana or the mana increase per level. As on level 3 it seems he has too many coils for the human to do anything to the fiends with only defend footies.

Of course not all of these changes need to be implemented but I think they deserve to be looked over.

1 Like
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More like “only human buffs and UD nerfs”

How about you look at 2nd last patchnotes? Thats exactly what you got. Go and read through your Gyrocopter buffs, your Knight buffs, MK buff, Paladin buff, your Orb of fire buffs, the UD statue nerfs, destroyer nerfs, orb nerfs, Frost armor nerfs.

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Hello Arrogance, I don’t think you are very reasonable with your suggestions (even being a pro-player some time ago). Most of your suggestions are very biased and unsupported.

  1. Castle build time reduced by 20-25 seconds.

The T3 upgrade time is the same for all races. The difference is that T3 upgrade for HU is the most expensive 360 gold and 210 lumber. It is possible to slightly reduce the (gold) cost of the upgrade, but don’t forget that HU has the strongest T2 army and that is why T3 upgrade for them costs a bit more.

  1. Rod of necromancy with 1 less charge.

That would be a little bit too much for a nerf. Then make the rod cost 100 gold. I think after 10 hp nerf, Blizzard will leave for a while skellies as they are. If we want to further nerf them, we can reduce their attack by 0.5 from 14-15 to 13-15. But I don’t think this is necessary.

in my opinion the problem is that the undead is killing too many peasants and slowing your T2 tech too much.

This is the point of UD’s strategy, if they don’t stop HU’s expand - they lost the game. Also, UD can’t counter-expand, because 4-5 footies and 1-2 elementals kill any building goldmine and losing footies for HU isn’t a problem with a running expo.

Also the dagger now heals more and undead gets into a situation where he can both do a ton of damage to the peasants and heal a lot his DK (2 charges equal 1/2 of DK’s hp) .

Not true. UD don’t use and can’t use dagger to push HU. They don’t have enough gold for it. The only time (very rare) when UD use the dagger is when DK is too low on hp, forced to tp home, and needs quickly to regen. Even then UD prefers not to spend 125 gold on dagger (2nd charge is useless).

  1. Indirect buff of human - shredder price a bit reduced (20-30 wood less) as the human is the only race who gains a lot by getting early shredder and thus buffing his play after getting the expo.

Again wishful thinking. Shredder’s cost is fine and buffing shredder will buff NE a lot.

Nerf the dreadlord’s damage vs mechanical units.

Dreadlord is fine, no need to touch him. In a standard game HU uses Pitlord to put more pressure on HU’s expo. DL is rarely used as a 3rd hero against HU. When undead player plays DL first, HU usually has advantage, because ghouls are quite weak against Archmage elem’s and MK’s clap.

DL one-shots gyros which are 100 gold each and that is more than ABSURD.

DL and Panda are meant to counter gyros. Gyros themselves are absurd and are the strongest T2 air-to-air unit. After the 1.30 buff they got splash on T2, cost 1 food, shut down UD’s destoyers vs ghouls strategy.

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I genuinely don’t understand how some of you humans complain about the dreadlord and fail to notice that carrion swarm does in fact NOT oneshot gyros, even at lvl 3. This is the second thread where I had to mention this even. Seriously, check this out: h ttps://liquipedia.net/warcraft/Patch_1.30.0
This is the patch that buffed flying machine HP from 200 to 250, and it was released on Aug 8th 2018. That means for almost 2 (!) years, you did not see a single gyro get oneshot by carrion in a live game, yet this “imbalance” still exists in your head.

2 Likes
5

The changes should addresse either peasants HP or values of the arcane towers, which are, in my opinion, fairly underrated against undead, especially versus the pitlord harrass.

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I will try to be as productive in my post as possible. Your comment is not helpful, it does not address balance and takes 1 point of my whole long post to bicker at.

The fact that you have to shoot once with a single destroyer to finish the job is not really relevant and I would urge you and all other posters to try to be a bit more objective regarding the whole purpose of the thread.

I am sorry man but your counter-post is 10 times more biased than the original post. The whole reply reads as the matchup is great and there is nothing broken in it.

Let’s start with the facts. The statistics screen of all games played over months in W3Champions now show exactly the opposite (orc vs undead and elf vs orc have better ratio of winrate accross all levels than hu vs ud). You can go to W3champions and use the statistics button to enlighten yourself a bit.

This means the starting point of this thread is that the matchup needs fine tuning. The suggestions I am doing are by no means perfect but are designed to cover 2 things:

  1. To tune the matchup
  2. Not to break other matchups - this is the sole reason I would somewhat accept your shredder argument as it might indirectly buff the NE players.
  • Castle build speed -

There is no reason why tier 3 should be the same build speed for all races if the cost is not the same across all races!

Point: This change will change no other matchup - human plays castle only vs human and late game vs elf when they go giants - which is a very specific strategy. Castle is not viable vs orc and does not swing the game into human’s favor vs undead. It just makes your paladin and first knights come 20 seconds earlier. Which given undead’s huge advantage when taking the pitlord is fine.

  • Rod of necromancy -

just consider what is going on on the highest level - a DK comes with 6 skeletons and no other units, goes around a level 3 archmage with 5 footies and elementals and kills 6 peasants (review finals of team league infi vs 120). It is simply too much. This was the point of my original suggestion. Other nerfs are also welcome - the skeletons currently do more damage than a footman, just saying.

Stating that if undead does not kill enough peasants the game is lost is so far from the truth - the human has much slower tier 3 (even if he loses no peasants due to the expansion) and the undead usually wins the game when he comes with the tier3 push. Your other point is also untrue , undeads can expand without any issue in this matchup as seen by all the dread lord and crypt lord players.

However, i agree that instead of nerfing the skeletons the human peasant HP can be buffed. HU currently is the only race which can take massive damage to the economy, so a buff in the peasant’s HP seems fair especially when considering that other races do not need to do any efforts to protect their economy.

Dread lord swarm -

i think his utility is great vs human, he can harass peasants a lot and has easy time reaching level 6, so scaling his swarm a bit only vs mechanical units will not be a huge change. Even if he does 160 damage to gyros , that is no problem as 3 shots of a splashing destroyer will kill them off anyways.

Now before ending my post, I would like to remind 2 things - first this is a discussion for helping the developers when considering changes. Noone likes to have their race nerfed, but in order for the game to be fair for all players, changes are needed sometimes. When discarding propositions, please instead provide alternative ideas - if you have no suggestions at all , just skip this part of the forum as it is for proposing balance related issues to be discussed.

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In my experience, now, Humans doesn’t have any opportunity against UD because Human doens’t have dispel until middle game. If UD comes with Crypt Lord with 5 beatles, more skeletons, it’s impossible for the human player to get an expa, so most of the times humans will lose.

I think that it’s very important a patch could add a dispel item to the Arcane Sanctum to counter an early rush with the Crypt Lord, maybe replacing the Lesser Clarity Potion. Also, because the necromancers can summon without any upgrade, while priest needs time to upgrade the dispel feature.

Another very important patch would be upgrade to reduce time to upgrade dispel feature for priests and increment their HP. Or in other hand, increment the mana cost and the time to summon skeletons for the necromancers without upgrades. Also reduce the Meat Wagon capacity.

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Warning: Troll detected.

Purchase Troll Priest, get your dispel like everyone does. Watch how the pro players do it. Creep Mercenary camp with Militia, get both Trolls for high ranged damage. Focus the beetles down with ranged damage.