Great to see Warcraft 3 receiving the love it deserves!
Just some constructive feedback:
- Arcane Tower Feedback increased from 12 to 18 on heroes.
This tower would serve HU better killing summons faster rather than burning more mana (e.g. UD will always send in skellies first to tank arcane followed by nova/coil and get out).
- Knight’s Sundering Blades bonus reduced from 15 to 10%.
This should have been removed from the game altogether once it was “researched by default”. Just balance the vanilla unit instead. There is no need for extra dmg vs medium armor by a unit that already does extra dmg to medium armor!
- Troll headhunter hit points reduced from 375 to 350.
Don’t know what is the reason for this change, orc is only at an advantage vs HU, but this wouldn’t fix it.
- Claws of attack +5 damage reduced to +4.
It was already questionable to go from +6 to +5. Claws are balanced as they are, improve gloves of haste instead, change the circlet to give +1 to all stats with +2 going to primary attribute only. And make cloak of shadows give 5% evasion.
- Lighting Shield removed from the item table.
Why not balance instead of deleting?
Here are tweaks I think are needed to fix the core problems in these three imbalanced match-ups.
HU vs ORC
Human players have two main options, rifles or breakers combined with casters. - Riflemen die very easily to ensnare, stomp, chain lightning when the orc heroes get high levels. But making rifles stronger would mess up HU vs NE.
- Breakers on the other hand deal so little dmg to the orc army that orc can just ignore them in most cases and focus fire heroes/casters without any meaningful punishment. Conclusion: Give breakers more dps, which would also aid HU against UD and NE.
HU vs UD
HU needs a lot of time to get a strong late game army, while ironically becoming too strong if the ideal composition is achieved (on the rare occasion that happens vs top UD players). This leads to a scenario where the game is hinging on whether the HU player can survive 20+ min (with expo) and win or UD will manage to end the game before that. Devs have been trying to solve this match-up by improving late game HU, but that doesn’t address the core issue.
- Solve this by making it possible to hide two peasants inside a farm to reduce early losses. Make arcane tower at least twice as effective vs summons, remove sundering blades, increase breaker dps as stated earlier and decrease rod of necromancy to 3 charges.
NE vs UD
Because NE struggles to compete with UD on equal income long term, they have to expand. But they can only achieve this on Tier 1 as their Tier 2 against UD is too weak and they would fall to a tier 3 push (on equal economy).
- Solution: give dryads +1 armor to help fighting vs fiends and gargs and giving NE a chance staying on one base. 2nd problem is that UD hero focus is too strong. Nova target dmg should be a bit lower to make it more of an AOE spell rather than single target nuke. And give Warden +2 strength boost, her HP is too low.
PS. - Some extra suggestions I think would greatly improve this game:
- Zeppelins should not be able to carry 8 Druids of tha claw! “Doom drops” ruin the NE mirror, it’s not fun to watch, and it’s frustrating to watch a player playing much better than his opponent and then lose because of a lame bear drop in the base. It is imbarrasing that this is still in the game after 20+ years. (All units above 3 supply should take 2 slots in the zeppelin)
- Cold arrow slow effect should be nerfed or mana cost increased. (Naga is too efficient and has mana for an arrow 99% of the time)
- Nerubian tower slow effect should be nerfed. It’s way too strong for it’s price. (often in the early game you can’t engage the expo once there is a nerubian tower up.
- Necromancer should start with a weaker cripple spell as initiate, followed by raise dead as adept and improved unholy frenzy as master (with HP drain removed). Here’s my reasoning: Necros in their current version are only viable in “all in” pushes. This is due to their ineffectiveness in low numbers without training. They aren’t a good return on investment with rod of necromancy being a better option for skellies and unholy frenzy being too costly (temple, training, 2 necros=545 gold). If necros can come out and actually be useful right away without training in low numbers then you can actually consider investing in training later on as you are utilizing the unit throughout the game.
- Troll witch doctor should have a weaker version of the healing ward as adept instead of stasis ward. It would allow orc to be more flexible late game and not rely on shadow hunter so much.
- Liquid Fire upgrade should increase the effect of unstable concoction to make bats viable vs destroyers and gryphons.
- Tauren Totem needs to be constructed faster for the sake of both spirit walkers and taurens seeing some play.
- Mountain giants taunt cooldown could be reduced since you removed double taunt.
- Priests should be able to heal from further away.
- Frost Wyrm need to be cheaper to see some play.
- Death Knight death coil should cost more mana (it’s too cheap for it’s value and the original devs were obviously thinking that the DK would be using 2 spells (not just coil) and therefore the mana cost for them was quite low)
- Crypt Lord impale needs either a buff or mana cost reduction.
- Dreadlord should get +2 agility buff
- Bloodmage should get +2 to all stats
- Ritual dagger should cost a bit more but give some mana regen as well (if implemented however, some UD heroes intelligence need to be adjusted accordingly)
Hope you take my feedback into consideration!