Hello there. I would like to discuss some of the recent number tweaks which have changed the game completely. For example:
- +15 HP to Archers, +33% buff to Marksmanship
- +30 HP to Headhunters, bonus range
- +50 HP to Flying Machines, +25% damage bonus (with an aoe attack!!!), +10 gold cost
- out of nowhere: +25% buff to batrider damage?
- a laughable +10% attack speed on frenzy ghouls
- -50 HP and reduced damage on destroyer orb
- -50 HP on statues
- -1 armor reduction on undead Orb
- buffs to stomp, chain lightning, clap
- buffs to Transmute (completely stupid)
- nerf to Metamorphosis duration
- nerf of critical strike, then nerf reverted
- nerf to mana burn, then nerf reverted
You can see a trend here. Undead, the least successful race in all of warcraft 3’s history got very heavy core unit nerfs.
In return, Undead is now able to not instantly lose the game when losing acolytes during tech, or to speedscrolls+ goblin zapper abuse which instantly destroyed ziggurats. Also Undead is now able to expand, which was practically undoable for most of Warcraft 3’s history. Great!
Now this patch is targeting Undead again. For years, Undead has had the least amount of hero and unit variety. Dreadlord was unplayable, now he has been buffed, but there is no reason to use him because he is too weak and Ghouls are trash units so vampiric aura can’t be used properly by UD. He doesn’t synergize with the only viable UD army that is Fiend as core units, a couple aboms and support statues/destroyers.
Now something like 15 years of having no viable summon hero, Undead finally gets the Crypt Lord buffed after he has been a joke hero. And now this:
This is a giant nerf of -110 total HP and -160 total HP on level 2 and 3. These Beetles used to be the worst summons in the entire game and this puts them exactly where they used to be. Whats even worse is the fact that they still grant the same amount of exp. Blizzard should have tried something like -30 and -45 HP nerf instead. They even pre-emptively nerfed the Crypt Lord from last PTR to live version by increasing the skill cooldown.
Every race has already found answers vs the Beetles. Orcs simply park 1 spirit walker and use 1 troll shadowpriest for 10 minutes of legal maphack vision. Human switches to lots of Breakers which work exactly like they do vs Tauren Chieftain: They burn mana, steal summons and render the strong Aoe Ability useless. Players have also found success with Gryphons and Polymorph against Fiends to prevent Web.
What the game needs is buff to unterutilised units like it happened to Mountain Giants, Taurens etc. Archer buffs went a little too far. Same with Troll Berserker buffs. Those should have been nerfed a little for a long time now.
I fear that after this round of patches, Undead is going to be left alone for way too long when it has still so many issues.
Compared to the other races, Undead many undead units are useless/not viable, for a very long time. This is where changes need to be made.
- Fix Gargoyle AI so they can act as anti-air instead of attacking ground units
- Make Frost Wyrms accessible and increase their attack range to match that of Gryphons (or increase it by 75, then add another +75 range bonus to Frost Breath upgrade and decrease research and train time)
- Do a proper rework of Necromancers
- Think about moving Statues to Temple of the Dammned, it makes no sense to train them from the slaughterhouse. This would also makse Necromancers more accessible
There are still a bunch of issues which make no sense when you look at them:
- Cooldown of Mass Teleport is way too short
- Metamorphosis Cooldown got nerfed and is very long now
- Transmute was buffed and its cooldown is way too short
- Animate Dead is a joke and no one will ever use it without buffs
- We were promised a Firelord rework yet there was none
Oh and obviously, how about you include campaign hero skins into the game like you advertise since weeks before launch? No word about this since launch yet you continue to advertise it! I’m pretty sure someone could be sued for false advertisement.