Warcraft III: Reforged PTR Patch Notes - Version 1.32.6

PTR Discussion and Bug Report
23

Overall the patch looks good. Here is a list of comments with bugs/observations/feedback:

MK: please also consider introducing damage cap for the clap.

Paladin: the number of resurrected units can be decreased from 6 to 5. Resurrecting 6 units for 150 mana like knights or rifles is a bit too powerful.

Shadow Hunter: Good change. But … the biggest con of the Big Bad Voodoo is that it removes all positive and negative buffs from units.
Possible solution: same ultimate, but instead of coloring all units in the voodoo red color, designate and color a region around SH that is affected by the ability. Grant all the units inside this region immunity towards only physical damage but be still exposed to magic and spell damage.

Tauren Chieftain: consider changing the stomp’s damage from 30/60/90 to 35/60/85 per level. Bring level 1 and level 3 closer to each other.

Keeper of the Grove: consider increasing the cooldown of the Tranquility from 60 to 75 seconds.

Druid of the Talon: The change from 145 to 135 is significant. It is better first to drop the cost from 145 to 140 and see the effect. Talons were nerfed for a good reason.

Druids: consider allowing to research Mark of the Talon and Mark of the Claw once T3 is done and drop the requirement to wait for the Master Upgrade.

CryptLord: Impale changes are nice, but it can’t be cancelled once initiated.

Carrion Beetles: Too powerful!! Increase the cooldown from 6 to 10+ seconds. Manacost could increase over levels, say 50/60/70.

Skeleton Warrior from the Book of the Dead still has 190 hp.

Potion of Greater Mana is fairly nerfed. Please consider nerfing the Pendant of Energy from 150 to 125 mana, which is a way too powerful item to find. This way mana items would match nicely with multiples of “125”.

Critters on TS!! Love it. By the way, critters’ paths on Twisted Meadows need to be fixed as well.

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24

After watching Insu’s stream and playing myself there where I few things I found concerning still with the balance.

Insu said that CL impale costs too much mana, for early stages of the game along with more expensive mana for beetles at Lvl 1 (remember Lvl 1 beetles are still the weakest summon by stats). CL needs either higher mana regen or higher base INT.

Impale still has invulnerability (melee units can’t hit) even if ground units are impaled. I think having ranged unit projectiles hit is a buff but its not nearly enough, ground units impaled should be hit by melee units without delay.

All ultimate’s mana cost were reduced except for Volcano and Stampede (which makes no sense), this is because they are still niche and bad overall ultimate. Especially firelord his lava spawn at Lvl 1 costs 150 mana and takes 15 attacks to split. Why does he have a 200 mana ultimate while Naga has a 150 mana ultimate?

Beastmaster is now the worst hero in tavern (he needs a buff to the bears stats) and a buff to stampede.

Tornado is actually pretty short now in duration. This is bad for one reason, the ability travels very slowly, it will take like 3-5 seconds from cast to reach target (if its buildings).

Other than this there is still a few other issues in the game:

Such as gargoyle AI targeting issue (you fixed makura one but not this…)

Cannibalize is still a trash upgrade.

You mentioned boats in patchnotes (which are now sea Zeppelins), they will be interesting to see if used in upcoming ladder maps/tournaments. But the boats need better turn rate and collision size as they clunk very easily unlike zeppelins (zeppelins are air units without the need for pathing), unlike boats.

Finally this is personal (But having three tavern heroes with a channel) is not original. Sea Witch, Firelord, Beastmaster. Maybe having Firelord Ultimate make him into a building like in HotS for defense? It’s a thought, but in a fast paced game like WC3 channels are hardly used except in very niche places. And out of these heroes (firelord is best ultimate for 4v4 and team games), then its sea witch (better utility as hero, and tornado is better now), then is beastmaster (no stuns, slows, just summons (bear is weak at early stages)), while stampede is like the worst channel if you don’t use whole thing. (And like I said before its hard to use a whole channel in this game)

Finally a rant about firelord summon vs archmage summon.

Water elemental has 525/675/900 hp per Lvl while lava spawn has 425/550/700 hp per Lvl. Lava spawn does more dmg on average but costs 30 more mana and Firelord is an agility hero (yet has no passive). Lava spawn costs 150, while water elemental on an archmage with brilliance aura costs 120… Then you realize that it takes 15 attacks to split a lava spawn and that a split only adds 12 seconds of life to the existing spawn. The abilities cooldown is also drastically longer at 32 seconds rather that the archmages 20 second cd. Something needs to change here as Firelord should not be a caster (He is agility hero) and good luck splitting a spawn.

Also don’t get me started on how bad incinerate is.

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25

Now, can you please remove players playing Arranged Team, being able to join Random Team games. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m sure this is something that blizzard came up with. It ruins the point of playing Random Team.

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26

Entangling Roots cast range on level 3 increased from 600 to 800. : RIP blade master

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27

Blizzard,

For the first time since the 2018 announcement I’m positively surprised with anything related to reforged. A living community needs a living game and this is the first real thing that feels to connect with a large subgroup of the wc3 population.

Below some of my ex ante thoughts for some balance changes. I could not list all, so picked out the most noticeable ones.

Thunderclap cooldown increased from 6 seconds to 7 seconds across all levels.

This feels needed. Thunderclap, especially against orcs, was so dominant. One had to get their battlefield of choice, speedscroll, healdscroll, mana potion, clarity potion and all of this, just to offset someone clap clap clapping their way through melee forces. Yet, this was mostly the case op the not-very pro level (at >1900 mmr, in fact, orc was very mildly favored with 50.88%; lets call that statistically insigificant); So this might help Orc overall to balance; but disfavor top HUs to remain the balance.

Rifleman Attack delay increased from 1.35 to 1.4.

I feel rifles are very, very potent. In general: i feel this game was made more noob friendly. Almost all heroes got buffed and also all t1 units got buffed. In general, I feel this is a fair change. But due to the popularity of rifles; it should also be monitored well.

Tauren Chieftain * War Stomp cooldown increased per level from 6/6/6 to 7/7/7.

THANK-YOU. Solo TC is pure rampage. Both with grunts and HH. I’m sure that won’t change. But at least this helps.

Entangling Roots cast range on level 3 increased from 600 to 800.

Double feelings about this. Kotg was overwhelmingly powerfull for a long time. However, by nature, kotg decreases in power throughout the game as dispell becomes more prominent as the game progresses. It will be very situational on when this becomes usefull. At higher levels I feel it won’t do much as others will just keep dispell around. At mid to low level of play, it may help the nelf to pick off more units. In other words: I feel like if an elf gets the upper hand late game (at non top level play) this ability now helps them to snowball that effect better.

Tranquility Invulnerability time removed. Duration reduced from 15 to 12. Healing increased from 40 to 48.

This may be the wrong way round. It already is impossible to fight in tranquility; and now that becomes even more so? It also adds up to the reduction of channeling time before the army can be on the move again?

Crypt Lord * Impale can no longer be interrupted. Units knocked airborne can now take damage and be attacked.

Eh, so at first sight what I think, what everyone will think: UD nukes just got amplified. Big time. And honestly, it will. And undead was already doing, overall, best of all races, and overall, at all MMRs. So a buff overall, for sure.

VS HU I’d like to note the skellie change as well. As the game may progress a bit more to creeping and hero levels; UD army nukability gets improved. Which actually may be fair. UD tends to win games at expo harass, but that is now reduced per skellie change. And HU late game armies with expo tend to walk over UD armies.

Interesting change, but for sure not a risk free one.
The beatles seem very, very potent for early game expansion, pushes. Percentually seen, this increase is off the charts. Rlly curious about this.

Skeleton Warrior * Base hit points decreased from 190 to 180.

Also see prior on crypt lord. This will help UD creep as skellies are no longer susceptible to being purged. Frankly, this can be a buff to UD as well as a result. But it also gives UD a bit more dynamics which the race could use. Not sure how it will affect overal meta / mmr balances.

Pit Lord A unit afflicted by Doom now has its movement speed slowed by 50%.

I like this. Normally people just walk out the unit that is doomed to die. Or you cast it on a low HP unit which kinda makes the whole concept of dooming a unit obsolete.

Firelord & Naga

Both look nice, tnx.

  • Potion of Greater Mana mana restored reduced from 300 to 250. Potion of Mana mana restored reduced from 150 to 125. Gold cost reduced from 200 to 150.

Interesting change. Will predominantly affect heroes as SH, MK, TC. Will see.

2v2 * Removed: Phantom Grove LV

Phantom Grove was actually a fine map. Phantom Grove LV was very poorly designed. Looking forward to experience Circle of Fallen heroes

3v3 Removed: Rolling Hills

Praise the lord. We always went tavern heroes instant push on this map to get the game over with. This map had more cringe than can be put into a post on these forums.

4v4 * Removed: Banewood Bog LV

Ha! Everyone saw this coming! Ryan even asked on discord about this, months ago. Nobody likes this map. You seem to have put hours into fixing the massive desyncs and still put it it back. Now it works, and upon many request; simply gets removed. Feel like this map was over invested in. Still glad to see it gone.

Terenas Stand LV * Critters added to the map

Nice; but please check this for all maps. Centaur Grove for example is also a map without critters. Turtle rock same. All maps should have some of these.

sanctuary LV Removed 2 Apprentice Wizards from the north and south red camps. Reduced the item drop from the Ogre Magi from level 6 Charged to level 5 Charged.

Made possible by clan 1uk1. We did this so often. Literally have not seen a game on this map, both pre reforged or on reforged, where this was not executed. Although it was fun to walk over your opponent with double level 6 ultimate like summons; it was far from balanced.

Overall: some good changes. At least, good in seeing changes. Some look really nice. Some look really tricky and can go both ways. Would love to see Pad being able to publish new statistics so we can sample to the old patch. But we need to accrue some N’s to get anything significant.

Thanks

28

Thanks for your hard work. I heard great response from my community friends. Here are my 2 cents as an undead player for some balancing ideas, despite recent effort, the meta is still DK-lich and a 3rd with mass fiends + tier3 orb in a micro-intensive style. How about giving the race more viability at tier2, with more diversified strategies that is less micro-intensive, but more strategic?

  1. cannibalism can use some mods. I literately see no use for it during any pro game.
  2. the temple, especially the necro, still see no light of the day;
  3. the meat wagon, such an iconic unit, sees no role other than defending tank rush.

My thesis is to make corpse usage more central to the UD race, and simultaneously make these 3 units more relevant by:

  1. buff cannibalism by granting some follow-up buffs, such as temporary gain of defense, or a regen aura, or a temp gain of disease cloud. Can make the current mechanism as the default for ghouls and abominations, and make the new mechanism an upgrade at tier 2 to buff the UD tier2 feasibility, and decrease the dependency on DK.
  1. the new cannibalism mechanism relies heavily on the starting position of the corps, that is where the meat wagon and its Exhume Corpses can come in handy. Additionally, if projectiles of meat wagon can start to deliver corps to certain location of impact, that will make an exciting strategy to play with.
  2. one way to buff necro would be to make the collapsed skellies remains reusable for once or a limited number of time, even after being dispelled. This can be an update in tier 2. It might similarly improve the viability of tier2, also set necro apart from the use of the Rod.

I sincerely in love of this game, and have been a fan for ~18 years. I hope these can help, and would love to interact with and contribute more if it is helpful.

For the burning legion!
Luke

2 Likes
29

Looks like good balance changes. Too bad there is still no working multiplayer ladder and the unfinished game was uninstalled months ago.

30

Now please increase the absolutle laughable 10 seconds cooldown from tranquality, to 240, because thats what it should have for its value.

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31

I wonder where they found their data for this balance patch.
Because all good players are either on Netease or on Pad’s Ladder. Do they track tournaments and these 2 ladders ? Or do they rely on the automated data from their garbage non-ladder where no good players are ?

32

I think nerfing MK’s clap and the rifles and buffing DK and CL will make the UD vs HUM (currently the most unbalanced matchup) even more skewed towards the UNDEAD. Basically, human gets nerfed while even now the winrate vs UD is much less than 50-50 while in the same time UD gets buffed… this makes no sense . In my opinion major undead nerfs are in order towards the orb, the fact that all undeads play 1 strat vs all races , and the fact all undead units are made from 2 buildings… thus making only 1 build order viable.

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34

It’s sad that Blizzard doenst know this game anymore, all those balance changes are nonsense.

I don’t want to explain anything stupid you guys did on this patch, but I would say it’s going to be the most unbalanced version

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35

I like your arguments and explanation

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36

Tranquility’s cooldown is 600% higher than you think it has

37

You forgot to nerf khadgars pipe to be lvl 1 am aura.

38

Some might use hyperboles as illustration for a problem.

39

hey, rifle cost is 205 gold,30 lumber. and request 3 foods supply. the unit not kind of cheap unit like archer and troll. if can’t push enemy with one base rifle, human difficult change the game against NE. even rifleman dose not have any skills and buffs (archer marksman shipment, troll berserker). i hope you guys hear lots normal gamer. and if you change game, get patch unpopular things(barrage tank, tauren, necromancer) and try new concept (spell immunity change to spell resistance)

40

These changes are all reasonable and in my opinion the best we had so far. Please keep writing your reasoning just like you did in this patch!
The Crypt Lord changes are great, will be super interesting to test out. Finally he gets the changes he needed.

Thunderclap nerfs are good, but the ability needs a damage cap.

Stomp nerfs are good, but should have gone a bit further.

Bear changes are great, but now Archers need a nerf because Massing Archers with t3 is too strong and boring. It has worked against all 3 races so far. Mass Archers vs UD, Orc (with Huntress frontline) is now the meta, and Lawliet is owning Humans with mass Archers aswell. The Archer is simply overbuffed.

Ghoul changes are sadly missing. The Ghoul is the worst t1 unit in the entire game, it can’t fight against anything because all other units, summons and heroes have received buffs. Dreadlord aura is still not enough for this unit to be good. It needs +2 armor and +20 HP, then another +40 HP upgrade on t2 to be an actual army unit. Militia are much better Ghouls since they are cheaper, can harvest more lumber and can be temporary fighting and creeping units. Ghouls are worse at both harvesting lumber and fighting for their cost.

Necromancers still need a full rework. Please don’t touch Unholy Frenzy, reduce the HP loss on it. Cripple needs to be the first spell and Raise Skeleton needs to be at adept. This is how to make the Necromancer work. Just like any caster who is worth using, like Purge, Slow, Heal, Spirit link, Necromancer needs to have strong crowd control right when he is build and needs enough mana to use it.

The Necromancer should never be about massing, gaining mana and make one strong mass Skeleton push, which is either hit or miss. This is bad design and creates boring and forseeable games. Make Cripple into a good first spell, don’t make it a weird combination of Howl + Slow. Make it slow a lot, for a long duration but not as high mana cost as in the last iteration.

Frost Wyrms still need changes. They must be more accessible. They should have reduced cost, food cost, exp gained, build time, slightly less stats, they need more attack range. Ideally, the Freezing Breath upgrade would increase their attack range, because disabling buildings is bad and not worth spending gold and lumber to upgrade.

Frost Wyrms should work as a counter to heavy melee units such as bears, Knights, Taurens. But since you buffed Flying Machines, Headhunters, Batriders, using Frost Wyrms is out of the question at the moment because just using Fiends and Aboms to block is better.

You need to analyze the Frost Wyrm and change it to where it can counter heavy armored units without instantly getting killed by all of its counters, which already exists once it is build. This is why it needs increased attack range.

If you were to change the mana cost to its power level, it needs to be less than the mana of a coil. This ultimate ability is so bad, you can never justify spending mana on it rathe than spending mana on a coil or a deathpact. Thats a fact.

Now you say this hero is strong, so he should have a weak ultimate? This argument makes no sense. Are you not aware of all the other strong heroes which are constantly played who have very strong ultimate ability?

Lets name a few:

  • Archmage with Mass Teleport
  • Mountain King with Avatar
  • Warden with Avatar of Vengeance
  • Tauren Chieftain with Resurrect
  • Blademaster with Bladestorm
  • Dreadlord with Infernal
  • Demon Hunter with Metamorphosis
  • Alchemist with Transmute (which you yourself buffed!)
  • Dark Ranger with Charm
  • Pitlord with Doom

The list goes on. Give Deathknight and actual ultimate ability. The current one is garbage and no one can justify spending mana on it.

Now lets go a little in-depth and look at what the ult does. To counter it, you can just run away. Does it win you the fight if your opponent doesn’t run away? No, not even close. You will rather lose units because you just made the decision to waste mana on not using Death Coil.

A proper ultimate ability would be something like this:

The Death Knight creates blight wherever he moves for 60 seconds. The blight stays after the ultimate is done, but can be dispelled just like usual blight can.

Every Corpse Created during this time will automatically be raised as a Ghoul, up to 8 Ghouls. After the duration is over, the Ghouls dissapear. The Ghouls have all damage and armor upgrades aswell as frenzy and cannibalize if researched.

This is just an example of an ability thats justified to spend mana on instead of 2 Death Coils. The balance team needs to know that no one is going to use an ultimate if its not justified spending mana on.

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41

Wow, really good changes! Thanx for the update

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42

If you look at heroes statistics on W3Champions page you can see that out of all most common 1st hero picks (all races), the Blademaster has by far the lowest winrate percentage (45,8%). I think it’s fair to give him back 2 agility points, especially considering how vulnerable he is to any sort of early game mass summons/tower pushes, which will become even more problematic if Crypt Lord buff will make it to live server. That change would be very much in touch with the idea of Warcrat being friendly for lower tier players as for them it’s extremely difficult to defend the cheese playstyles mentioned above.
It would also help with Orc vs NE matchup inbalance which unfortunately wasnt adressed in the PTR patchnote. According to statistics it’s one of the three imbalance matchups at the moment (along with UD vs HU and HU vs NE).
+2 agility would possibly make Blademaster playable again versus Human. At the moment the only viable option for 1st hero choice is Far Seer.

2 Likes
43

I still believe in my idea for a passive as the death knights ultimate, maybe some statbonuses but the main idea was that it replenishes like 3 manapoints every autoattack that lands on an enemy. ^^

2 Likes