Today, we’ve updated the 2.0.3 PTR with additional changes that are now in-testing.
NEW CHANGES
World Editor
Increased the Tileset limit from 16 to 64.
Please note that using more tileset textures may significantly increase the load time of the map. Use with caution!
Added an option under the Advanced Tab – Preserve Copied Object Height. When enabled, the editor will remember the height an object was copied at when it is being pasted.
Undead
Ghoul base damage reduced from 10 to 9.
MASTER CHANGELIST
World Editor
Fixed an issue with BlizSetAbility____ natives where they were applying globally instead of locally to abilities
Increased the Tileset limit from 16 to 64.
Please note that using more tileset textures may significantly increase the load time of the map. Use with caution!
Added an option under the Advanced Tab – Preserve Copied Object Height. When enabled, the editor will remember the height an object was copied at when it is being pasted.
Undead
Ghoul base damage reduced from 10 to 9.
Neutral
Dark Ranger Drain Life can no longer target self.
Bug Fixes
Fixed numerous crashes.
Please report any issues with the game closing incorrectly and/or settings not being saved.
Fixed an issue where mouse buttons could issue incorrect commands when hovering over the UI.
Heroes in the Warchasers custom map now have inventory slots.
This issue I mentioned before is still occurring. Please fix before this update ships! Or at least communicate if it’s not being reproduced on y’alls side.
When will reforged mode SetTerrainType be fixed?
It broke compatibility with custom map that use complex and beautiful environment. Everything is just dirt.
UD players only think of themselves, very selfish
With the help of UD players’ crazy voice on social media to influence Blizzard
, UD basically won all the championships, but later lost some to the human race
Game balance has become a complete lie
I agree with the above viewpoint Remo and Neoand happy
They have a significant impact on balance, causing very negative effects
They are UD players, and their advice is very beneficial to UD
You should listen to the advice of Lawlie and Focus and double the compensation for players who have been persecuted by IMBALANCE before
A balanced patch cannot compensate for the trauma caused earlier, only a compensatory patch can
Well, make your own AsiaCraft 3 and play it yourself. With your own great balance.
You can even remove the undead there, let you have three races!
And play your tournaments with 5 participants! Good luck!
Good change on the ghoul -1 damage, as an UD player I understand why it is done, but only on tier 1-2. On tier 3 ghouls still need to be a strong unit. I guess we need some buff of ghoul frenzy, maybe some attack speed bonus (+10%) or damage +1 buff, just to compensate for the nerf?
When are we going to see some RELEVANT Orc buffs? This race has been performing terribly for a very long time with recent months being the worst since I can remember.
Frienzy Ghouls, Gryphons, Immolation and Thorns aura are destroying Orcs left and right on all levels.
Increase Blademaster stats, Decrease mana cost of Spirit Wolves, Revert at least one of TC nerfs (Stomp/Aura)
Orc’s healing is tedious, inefficient, and the most expensive in the game. Decrease gold cost of healing salve and speed scroll.
Rebalance Liquid Fire so it adds +100 damage to Unstable Concoction so Orcs can somewhat counter armor upgraded heavy air units.
100% true. Don’t listen to any preachers like Back2warcraft.
Regarding balance.
A Focus player who’s been playing the game for 20 years knows what hurts this race, or Lyn.
In Europe, no one chooses orcs (I’m talking about strong ones).
StarBack only plays orcs when he’s directly facing Humans and has no choice.
What’s Hitman doing? > the once eternal Orc?
Cash has a problem with top players like Jens, Hawk, Unique, Leon (not to mention the Chinese).
It’s a galaxy.
You might be playing a different game. Literally all meta Orc units deal piercing damage vs UD - HHs, Wyverns, Kodo. Vs Human early game is HHs vs Footies. This change impacted Orcs negatively. We didn’t even get compensation, unlike Elf.
Over last 6-7 years Blademaster is the most nerfed hero in the whole game either directly (stats), or indirectly (most damage items, circlet).
Taurens are pretty much meta only vs Pala Rifle.
All the variety changes that Orcs got are near useless. There are plenty of underutilised Orc units and spells that Blizzard were not able to fix for over 20 years.
So the simplest solution is cheaper healing and bringing back strong Orc heroes
Team stacking inside a match. Too often, two stronger players are placed on one side and two weaker players on the other, instead of “cross-seeding” to balance team averages.
Overly wide MMR spreads within the same lobby. In team queues, you regularly see very large gaps between the strongest and weakest players, which turns many games unabalanced.
AT vs RT changes hurt 3v3/4v4. Splitting arranged teams (AT) from random teams (RT) makes sense, but with a small population it inflated queue times or prevented matches. You can check leaderboard and see how many teams are playing. In 4v4 only 9 games total are played all season!
High ping. Make matchmaking to never pair you up with someone if ping is higher then 170ms, every 10 games I play, I get one game where ping is 400ms stable which is unplayable.
Ranking UI problems. Odd promotion pop-ups and “N/A” rank displays, also on loading screen you cant still see LVL and MMR sometimes.
Placement matches not showing. When you play any first five games you get screen that you completed all 5 placement matches.
Improvements
1) Start with a strict MMR window, then expand over time
Begin with a narrow search band (e.g., ±200 MMR for the first ~2 minutes). If no candidates appear, expand stepwise (±400, ±600, …). Try something, if the waiting time is too large then adjust it. We are willing to give you feedback.
2) Do “in-match slotting” to minimize team variance
When 4/6/8 eligible players are gathered, assign teams to equalize team averages and reduce variance. Don’t let “two strong vs two weak” slip through just because all players fit the window.
3) Revive team queues with partial premades (under guardrails)
Allow partial AT groups (e.g., 2 players in 3v3, 2–3 in 4v4). Offset the communication edge with a small, transparent MMR adjustment (AT should play against higher MMR RT). This fills queues without letting premades overrun RT.
4) Regional ping caps with staged expansion
Keep low latency a priority but set reasonable max ping caps per region (e.g., ~160–180 ms).
5) Be transparent in the UI
Show the current search range and how it’s expanding (“Searching ±200… now ±400…”). Fix promotion spam and “N/A” rank displays. Transparency makes longer queues more tolerable and builds trust. Fix placment screen.
6) Tackle leavers
Use progressive timeouts for serial leavers.
7) Prefer AT-vs-AT mirroring whenever possible
When feasible within the search time, keep AT vs AT. If time expires and you allow AT vs RT, apply tighter MMR variance for the RT side to compensate for the premade’s coordination advantage.
If I forgot something, please write it in your post!
Perhaps a dumb question (it isn’t but I hope it causes others to not be blind to it) but what is the logic behind the 10% DPS nerf for Ghouls? Undead is objectively performing worse than the other races (they are underrepresented in top divisions, within the top divisions they on average have lower MMR). That doesn’t mean that perhaps ghouls are very good and other things are very bad, with the latter making them overall worse, but adding a nerf on a bad performing race without compensation is going to make the worst race even worse (I’m not an undead player).
I’m really missing the internal validity and coherency towards the (at least) implicit framework that balance idea’s should be referenced to. Welp, now lets wait till people disagree with me because we have tourney ongoing on which happens some undeads are doing well, so I can point out how they have no t test nor remotely statistical significance, but traded that for severe individual biases and anecdotes.
Edit: while we are patching again, can we please consider
Fixing the EU server so people in the EU can sometimes play on the EU server when facing a non EU person?
Fix the 20 - 50% joinbug issue?
Fix that the game will always crash in a joinbug after watching a replay
Fix that tournaments do not provide bonus wins when the progress is halted due to no shows
Fix that ladder games may be constructed by bnet as 4on3, 2on1 or 1on0 (yes this happens and more than one might think)
Fix incorrect date notation for non imperial users (aka everyone except the US people) for tournaments
Fix not have the tourney banner show the upcoming tourney as the last completed tourney?
Reinstate the exit game so the game can easily be closed. Don’t remove this button as a workaround for poor match logging/registration.
Also fix the failed to retrieve data issue that is back again
Fix the monthly 2 - 3 times recurring issue that bnet can’t properly find matches with a deep dive / rootcause fix, instead of keeping patchworking it when it occurs.
