Undead Analysis Series: Ghoul

Competitive Multiplayer
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Before I go into the thick of it, I want to give a little background about myself. I don’t post here often, but like many of you, I’m very passionate about this game. War3 is in a bit of a pickle right now, so I’ve waited before posting anything large.

Anyways, I’ve written huge amounts of text before and I’ll try to keep it concise. It’s also hard to type as much on the phone.

So a final bit about myself, I’ve suggested many ideas on here and reddit and many of them have made it into the game:

  • removing graveyard requirement for Sacrificial Skull

  • increasing damage, lessening duration of Disease Cloud

  • reverting Necromancers

So anyways… the Ghoul!

He’s our 120-gold, 340 health friend. He actually does decent damage for his cost, especially with the frenzy upgrade. The main issue is his durability. With spells like War Stomp, Thunder Clap or Breath of Fire in the game, using Ghouls is a huge liability. With their poor melee range, low health and slow speed, they just can’t engage in combat directly without taking heavy losses.

We don’t see Ghouls used that often in competitive play nor do we see them used much in casual multiplayer. As I keep mentioning, it’s just so easy for Ghouls to be focused and killed. They are meant to “beat” ranged units, but they will have difficulty doing so as they can be kited and many Ghouls will end up bumping into each other.

The design of the unit is peculiar. It is really easy to make the unit as he builds fast, requires zero wood and is available at tier 1. He needs to be cheap because he is the dedicated wood- gatherer for Undead, yet he must have some defining feature to be a usable combat unit. The obvious synergy is with Vampiric Aura via the Dreadlord. It’s a good combo, but the healing is entirely dependent on the Ghouls getting in and dealing damage. It’s just really hard to make this happen because focus fire negates the wide healing Vampiric Aura provides.

Other complementary options are using the Death Knight for pre-tier 3 speed and Banshees for damage mitigation. Speed is incredibly powerful for Ghouls because it greatly helps them to engage favorably and escape safely. With their poor durability, they simply have to avoid damage period. Banshees help their durability. Curse causes enemies to miss 33% of the time, therefore doubling their health. Anti-Magic Shield is a godsend against splash damage spells. And of course Ghoul Frenzy is a must with Ghouls moving and attacking faster. Ghoul users should get this as fast as possible.

So why aren’t Ghouls used in serious play? Well competitive Warcraft 3 is heavily based on dealing as much damage as possible while taking the least amount. Pro players are so efficient that they will rarely lose units compared to the average player. Committing to Ghouls maximizes risk especially before Ghouls get speed.

The simple answer is to look at the opportunity cost of using Ghouls versus using Crypt Fiends. Fiends have a higher health pool, can focus fire with their ranged attack, can hide with Burrow, instantly survive from no health with Death Coil and can deal with air with Web. Ghouls are a high-risk unit that offer little advantages and only really shine late game at tier 3. You are running a one-trick pony, hoping for a payoff at tier 3. Using Fiends covers 5 bases, while using Ghouls barely covers one.

In order for Ghouls to be used more, I believe the best change would be to give them increased speed at tier 2. As I’ve mentioned, speed helps them to get in and deal damage much more effectively while taking less damage trying to get in. And again speed helps Ghouls to also jump out of situations where they would be blown up.

I think the easiest way to make this happen is to move Cannibalize to tier 2 and when researched, it increases Ghoul movement speed by 40. Ghoul Frenzy would then increase Ghoul movement by another 40, instead of 80. You wouldn’t need another icon and a mere 40 extra movement speed at tier 2 would not imbalance the game. We’re just giving half of Ghoul Frenzy to tier 2. This would encourage a more mobile, aggressive Undead style of play where you strike weak areas and run away. Then at tier 3, you can engage when Ghouls get much stronger. This change would allow a smoother transition for Ghoul play from tier 1 to 3 instead of sticking to slow Ghouls until tier 3.

Proposed Changes:

  • Cannibalize now requires Halls of the Dead

  • Cannibalize when researched gives Ghouls an additional 40 movespeed

  • Ghoul Frenzy when researched only gives Ghouls a 35% attack rate increase and 40 movespeed bonus, down from 80 movespeed

Other people have suggested that we give Ghouls some more health or we make them stronger but make them cost more. I don’t agree with these ideas because some more health does nothing to address the issues of their slow speed and their melee range. Ghouls are always going to have low health because they are 2-food units. Footmen are their counterpart that deal with damage with Defend. Ghouls should then deal with damage by avoiding it with speed. If Ghoul play becomes popular, it would then encourage Dreadlord openers, injecting strategic diversity so desperately needed in Undead play.

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Agree with giving them more speed. But it should not be tied to cannibalize and it should not be on t2. Just give them +10 speed so they are a little faster. Currently Ghouls need either DK lv 2 or Sleep to be able to surround anything.

Ghouls need more hp because the only player that can make Ghouls work somewhat is Happy, who is able to pull them back at 20 hp. And even then, they never perform better than Fiends. Even with Vampiric AND unholy aura. The best units in the game are good on their own. Grunts, Headhunters, Archers, Riflemen with good stats. Ghouls have terrible stats and even with 2 auras, they are mediocre units and outperformed by Fiends.

Ghouls need +2 armor and +20 hp at the start of the game. Armor will make healing on them more valuable. Thus it will make cannibalize, vampiric aura, statues and any healing more valuable. Spells like Thunder Clap and Stomp need big nerfs. The fact that Blizzard buffed these spells will forever render Ghouls useless. On tier 2, Ghouls should receive an upgrade for additional maximum HP, for up to 400 hp. That way, they can finally compete with Fiends in terms of effectiveness. Their cost could also be increased by 5 gold (same happened to Flying machines).

Blizzard did tons of changes that made Ghouls worse than ever before. All melee heroes are a lot faster now. Tons of buffs to almost every unit that fights Ghouls: Huntresses, Archers, Riflemen, Headhunters, Water Elementals, Wolves, Chain Lightning, Stomp, Thunderclap. Without buffing Ghouls or nerfing said skills, Ghouls will forever stay exp tomes.

Think about what you see when you see Ghoul play. Ghouls against Archers. Do you see any fighting? No, you just see Ghouls and DK running around, trying for a surround while Archers focus down Ghouls one by one together with the hero. Just 5 attacks or so and UD has to give up or lose the Ghoul. Their stats are trash compared to everything else that got buffed now, as I have explained above. This forces UD players into using Fiends more than ever before, and this is the wrong approach.

Necromancers should not have been reverted. They are back to being a boring “mass and attack” unit they always were. You make like 4 of them and wait for mana, thats all you do.

For casters to be good and viable, they need to have value right when they are trained. Casters like Shamans with Purge, Sorcs with slow, Priest with Heal, or casters with Spirit link all to exactly this.

But Necromancers? Might aswell buy a rod of necromancy instead of investing into temple + necros. Its cheaper and offers the same. Also you don’t spend 2 supply on a unit with bad stats.

Necros need to go back to the reworked skill build: Cripple, then Raise dead, then the frenzy we currently have, not stupid incite unholy frenzy. Then, change cripple to more slow, less mana cost and don’t make it some weird combination of slow+ howl of terror. That makes no sense, Curse is cheaper, lasts longer and offers more damage reduction. Just give cripple a big, long duration slow and attack speed slow but with much lower mana cost than what it had. Necros were not even able to cast one cripple right after they were trained.

Also something I suggested already, a new effect for cripple: Unit cannot be accellerated past X movement speed. This means, cripple cannot be countered by speed scroll anymore and it prevents the BM from using windwalk to speed away. Instead, he will be unable to accellerate and only be able to walk through units.

There you have it. With these easy fixes, Necromancers have a reason to be used! Also move Statues to temple of the dammned, because no one uses Slaughterhouse on t2 anyway. If you want to siege, UD just uses Pitlord with rain of fire. Meat wagons have trash stats, don’t get armor from armor upgrades. Why? We have no idea. Demolishers do, and they have much more HP. Again Meat Wagon, like the Ghoul, is a unit that has poor stats for no good reason.

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@Basilisk I think you are way off with your balance suggestions:

These changes would make ghouls imba unit. You should understand that ghouls are not an unused unit, they are not that weak. You can see ghouls not only in mirror match up. They are occasionally added in the mix against ORC and NE. Recently Syde and last year 120 (eerO) showed some very interesting games with ghouls.

@GhostTroop As you said, ghouls are a mining unit, this means increasing their speed increases UD’s wood income. Also, once DK gets Level 2, ghouls get 10% speed increase boost, which make them mobile enough for early-mid game. That’s why we should be cautious with speed upgrades for ghouls and calculate them well.

Your suggestion to add to cannibalize speed movement for ghouls and aboms as a bonus looks appealing to me. But I would limit that only to +20 movement speed and as a tier 2 upgrade (or at least requiring graveyard).

Note: the current cannibalize upgrade imho isn’t suitable for the game. You don’t use this ability when you attack, defend, and it doesn’t help you creep faster. If your ghouls are weak, you simply send them to base to harvest lumber and regenerate on blight, and replace them with new ghouls.

The change I would advocate for is to slightly improve ghoul’s durability: increase hp from 340 to 350. It will be a very similar upgrade that archers got in patch 1.30. This < 3% hp increase should not the tilt the balance on the pro-level, 2vs2 games, etc.

I agree, but Dreadlord openers right now fail because of the other issue. In order, to make DL first + ghouls viable strategy you need to make an early expo (the only advantage that this build has). However, on a pro-level it doesn’t work. If your opponent expects DL or sees it with a scout, he goes straight to your expo. Then BM with heal pot and clarity potion, or 2-3 footies with elems, or archers with trents will not give you a chance to summon a ziggurat and a goldmine, canceling it over and over again.

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@Basilisk: Your changes seem to be too much, seem too strong and do not address the design problems of the Ghoul.

Ghouls are 2-food, melee units that move at an average speed. As a 2-food unit, they have very low health, but they have to be, because they cannot be as good as the Grunt because he’s a 3-food melee unit. Grunts get huge health pools at 700+ for this reason. Footmen are the closest unit to compare Ghouls to, but they are pretty squishy as well. The only saving grace is that they are tremendously effective against ranged units thanks to Defend.

The design of Ghouls does not offer them the health pool of Grunts nor the specialization of Defend. The best asset of Ghouls is speed. While Ghouls need speed, we don’t want to give them too much power too fast or it may break the game. Frenzy Ghouls can deal massive amounts of damage and even more thanks to the 35% attack rate increase, when it used to be 25%.

Increasing their health is not a permanent solution because it doesn’t address their melee attack range, their slow speed and how they bumble into each other because you have to make so many of them. You can’t give them too much health because they are a resource gatherer and also because they are a 2-food unit. So I say drop this line and focus on speed. Speed will allow Ghouls to close the gap for better engagements and it will also allow them to escape unfavorable battles.

I can imagine a game where UD goes Ghouls and Banshees. Before the battle, Banshees cast Anti-Magic Shield on Ghouls. Ghouls then go in and the enemy player spams a bunch of AoE spells. With their bonus speed, Ghouls are able to run out, meet up with the Banshees elsewhere and UD puts another coating of AMS on Ghouls to attack in again.

So again the idea is we want to make specific simple, yet effective changes that are easy to do and require very little programming. These are most likely to get into the game. Speed is what Ghouls need to avoid damage in the first place, not some little pips of health. Moving Cannibalize to tier 2 and granting bonus movement speed is a very easy change to do.

I see you talking about other UD units, but remember this topic is about Ghouls.

@SaveOrcas: Increased movement speed will increase UD’s lumber production, but so would have a ton of Ghouls as well, so I don’t see it as an issue. DK does give a movement speed upgrade, but the idea is that with this upgrade, you would then not need the DK and replace him with the Dreadlord and his aura.

The speed upgrade is not unbalancing because it merely provides Ghouls speed in the mid-game. When Ghoul Frenzy is done, Ghouls with my idea will move at exactly the same speed as Ghouls currently do when played today. So again, it’s about giving Ghouls a minor speed improvement at tier 2.

My suggestion does in fact move Cannibalize at tier 2. The numbers for speed can be played with. 40 was suggested because it is half of the speed given to Ghouls at tier 3 with Ghoul Frenzy. As you mention, Cannibalize is simply never used in this game, which is why moving it to tier 2 would hardly hurt Ghouls at tier 1. It is the additional speed at tier 2 that makes the upgrade worth researching.

And again I have to disagree with the health change. 10 more health is just one more attack or so and it really doesn’t address the main issues about Ghouls. Ghouls need to be mobile to avoid damage in the first place. Ghouls will never be frontline units and instead must be played in a calculated, opportunistic way. You strike when you see a good opening and you run away when an enemy force comes at you. That’s how Ghouls must be played which is why speed is the answer. Ghouls are more like assassins, not tanky warriors.

I agree, but Dreadlord openers right now fail because of the other issue. In order, to make DL first + ghouls viable strategy you need to make an early expo (the only advantage that this build has). However, on a pro-level it doesn’t work. If your opponent expects DL or sees it with a scout, he goes straight to your expo. Then BM with heal pot and clarity potion, or 2-3 footies with elems, or archers with trents will not give you a chance to summon a ziggurat and a goldmine, canceling it over and over again.

Ghoul play does not require UD’s to expand. Ghoul play is about playing offensively and striking and retreating a lot. It’s based on movement. You need to be poking at the enemy, making him respond to you. Making an expansion goes against this philosophy.

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2 food units got massive buffs. Ghouls were already weak before the recent changes. Riflemen, Headhunters, Archers, Huntresses got buffs while Ghouls stayed the same. Even Casters got their damage increased and since Ghouls have 0 armor and take additional damage for them, this does add up.

No one can argue that Ghouls somehow got any better with Archers receiving +15 HP and even +5 HP in the past, have Elune’s grace, get a +33% buff to Marksmanship.

Troll Berserkers are the strongest 2 supply unit in the game and focus down Ghouls easily.

Ghouls will continue to stay walking exp tomes. Even the buffs to Vampiric aura did not do anything for them, which is no surprise considering their stats are simply trash, they have too low HP compared to everything else and magic abilities like Stomp, Thunder Clap, Fan of Knives, Forked Lightning, Chain Lightning, Entangle, Acid Bomb etc just kills them easily.

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I prefer to use ghouls over fiends myself but they are absolute trash in every aspect.
While I agree with you Basilisk on the above post, I do not believe giving hp is the way to go because the Ghoul unlike other 2 food units is a lumber harvester first and attacking unit second. This fact is the real problem, they can not buff the ghoul too much since it needs to maintain its cheap cost as a resource gatherer otherwise it throws off undead’s early economy composition if they up the cost. Giving the ghoul +2 armor and +20 hp makes them almost a footman that can gather wood, that is pretty broken, and you would need to up the cost significantly like around 20 gold or more.

I don’t know how to improve the ghoul that doesn’t screw up things unfortunately, maybe instead of adding hp or speed to them they could be left alone and decrease their gold cost to 100 or 110. This would make them more easily massed allowing more dps on the field, the only side effect is quicker lumber harvested in early game but I mean if you are going ghouls your not using lumber anyways.

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The recent changes have introduced massive powercreep. I get that you might think giving Ghouls +2 armor and +20 HP turns them into Footmen. But Ghouls becoming closer to actual fighting units is exactly what they need.

Look at militia. 4 armor, 75 gold cost that can harvest gold, lumber (becomes more effective than Ghouls) and powerbuild. They are already better than Ghouls for way less money. They are a backbone unit and after even used for allin-pushes and after militia duration runs out you just build towers with them.

Everything that moves around the map in the earlygame has received massive changes. Wolves, Archers, Water Elementals, Keeper, Treants and even every single melee hero is stronger now because of additional movement speed. Grunts are still fine, they were always units with good stats. Footmen are also fine, Militia are still great. But Ghouls remain with terrible stats and so they will forever stay useless without buffs.

Just look at any matchup right now. You see mostly ranged units. Melee units in general are really weak right now. Every race has strong piercing damage units. Melee units being weak is not just a problem for Undead. Bears struggle heavily. Orc gets destroyed by Thunderclap alone and have started using windriders and Kodos and more ranged units. Nightelf even goes into mass piercing damage with PotM.

Its evident ranged units dominate the metagame right now, this goes for all races.

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You guys need to realize that a little extra health and some armor will do nothing to make Ghouls used more. Ghouls having 360 health versus 340 health doesn’t change their weakness to AoE, their melee range and their slow movement. It doesn’t make up for the fact that with Fiends, you get a very large amount of health, focus firable ranged attack and the ability to attack air units. Again, I point at speed.

Speed allows you to get away when a battle goes bad. When you are fighting and you run into one Shockwave/Thunderclap/Fan of Knives, you really, really need to get out of there and heal. Eating another one of those spells is likely to kill 3+ Ghouls, making you lose 360+ gold and give a boatload of experience to an enemy. And the best way to run away isn’t 20 more health… it’s actual faster movement speed.

You basically cannot engage at all without completely losing until you are ready. The best way to get ready then is to go Banshees, throw out Curses and apply Anti-Magic Shield on each of your Ghouls. You’d also want to get Ghoul Frenzy for the bonus speed and attack rate bonus.

I agree with you that ranged units are just too powerful in Warcraft 3 and of course in Starcraft. It’s also strange that the counter to them should be melee units as we see by normal damage doing bonus damage to medium armor types. Ghouls just don’t work like this because in a large battle, they just die before getting to their target and they bump into each other. Ranged units can focus fire and don’t have to worry about bumping into each other as Ghouls do. Furthermore, when you have a 3-food ranged unit, you get additional health, which is why Fiends are so good.

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Hey GhostTroop, I think you have a point. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea to add to the Cannibalize upgrade a speed movement upgrade for ghouls and aboms.

The price of upgrade, amount of movement added, and availability on the UD’s tech tree can be tested.

I am thinking about raising cost of Cannibalize upgrade to 100 gold, no tech required, and add +20 movement speed to make ghouls’ speed equal to most other units’ speed on the map.

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We can also compare the values of the upgrades for the first units in the barracks for each race. Improved Bows, Grunt’s Strength, Defend - they are all highly used, while usage of Cannibalise is very rare.

Blizzard updated it in 1.30 and they should keep playing with it to make it work. For example, instead of staying in place and devouring a corpse, the ghoul can devour the corpse and get hp on the go like Kodo removes hp from a devoured target (similar mechanics).

The upgrade could be also completely reworked, because wounded ghouls are usually sent home to gather lumber and regenerate. Instead, as GhostTroop and many other people on forums pointed out, the upgrade should add movement speed, possibly hp or regen effect to ghouls.

Note: Players agree that ghouls are not OP at all and are rather weak unit at the moment.

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GhostTroop is correct. Ghouls would benefit a ton from just a very small movement speed increase. Small enough to let them be faster than Archers, Headhunters, Riflemen, Footmen, Grunts, Fiends.

Ghouls are useless without a hero. They don’t have the stats to fight head on. They only exist for surrounds. This is achieved with the Dreadlord’s Sleep ability or Unholy Aura from the DK. However there is no reason to produce more Ghouls with the DK, you must make Fiends to be competitive.

However, the problem of their poor stats remains, while powercreep has happened to every unit and hero they fight against. They will still die like the exp tomes they are, even with 5 or 10 more movement speed. Archers got +15 HP, Headhunters got additional Range and HP, Rifles, if used against undead, are usually played en masse with a Paladin. Playing Ghouls against mass range units is usually a complete disaster for the Undead. There is no reason to mass Ghouls blindly into a ranged army and hope for a good engagement. Investing into Fiends is just better.

Ghouls need speed, additional armor to amplify healing from statues, aura, cannibalize and coil, aswell as HP upgrades. The cost can be raised by 5 or 10 gold for this.

Same has happened with Flying Machines. A huge 25% increase in both Hitpoints and damage for a measy 5 gold cost increase. And don’t forget its effectively way more than a 25% damage increase because flying Machines deal area of effect damage!

This is the only way to give UD more playstyle variety. If you introduce powercreep to every other unit and hero, don’t expect UD players to suddenly “innovate with new playstyles”. Its not possible with terrible stats on the unit.

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Ghouls don’t need speed.

What they would benefit from would be +1 armor at base unit so they don’t have zero armor without upgrades.

They would also benefit from a small hp upgrade +20 or a 20% magic resistance upgrade at tier 2.

They only way to give undead new playstyle is by nerfing DK Aura buffing undead regular units speed.

This way other strats have more viability.

Also cannibalize might need to become after 5 seconds you digest corpse.