What Changes Would You Like to See If there is a Patch Soon?

General Discussion
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Originally on Reddit

We all know there was a recent small update. And it’s usually about this time when patches got some work in the past 2/3 years, IIRC.

What would you like to see if there’s a patch? Voice your opinion and it might affect how the game evolves later on! Let’s help the lone Bliz maintainer a bit together!

I will go first. I found 3 neutral heroes who haven’t got an update since 2019 even 2018.

  1. Alchemist 2019: liquipedia DOT net/warcraft/Alchemist
  2. Tinker 2018: liquipedia DOT net/warcraft/Tinker
  3. Dark Ranger 2019: liquipedia DOT net/warcraft/Dark_Ranger

So… what is the proposal?

I suggest Dark Ranger’s Life Drain can be used on friendly units to transfer HP to them. It heals friendly units at the cost of Dark Ranger’s own HP. The cost can be lower when the skill level gets higher. The skill is disabled, or the channeling effect just stops, when Dark Ranger’s HP is too low.

EDIT: Friendly units excluding undead to avoid the vicious circle of DR heals DK and DK coils DR.

Why

  1. Dark Ranger hasn’t got an update since 2019. Last Fire Lord change before the recent ones was in 2020. Maybe it’s time.
  2. This spell is seldomly (or almost never?) used. Usually people only pick Silence and Black Arrow. Making it more flexible could increase it’s usage and giving the game more variety.
  3. Blood Mage’s Siphon Mana (liquipedia DOT net/warcraft/Blood_Mage) is the same kind of channeling spell, (literally the same logo with a different color…) and it can be used to transfer mana to an ally. Why not this one?

Possible Influences

  1. More Dark Range and Life Drain usage. New hero & skill combos or even meta could emerge.
  2. Stronger meat shield heroes, since now there’s one more way to heal them.

If you have a proposal too, please follow the template and explain the What and Why of the changes you would like to see. Optionally, the Possible Influences to the game. Making it optional since it takes some deep thoughts and I’m sure others will point out more in the later discussions. Following this template would make your proposals of higher quality!

2 Likes
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What Changes Would You Like to See If there is a Patch Soon?

Uh, we just had a patch. The only obvious change was they broke the Mac version, and maybe performance improved a little bit.

There could be balance changes etc. when the next ranked season rolls around. But I don’t think i’d expect anything real dramatic.

Personally I’d like to see my favorite hero, the naga sea witch, get a bit of love. She’s pretty strong on the offensive early, but sucks when you’re put on the defensive and and she falls off hard late game. I’d like to see the damage on forked lightning increased a little bit, as it can only ever hit 3 targets (and sometimes doesn’t) so it really should be stronger than similar abilities that hit more targets. I think she should also be an agility hero rather than an intelligence hero, reflecting her nature as an archer and putting her stat distro more in line with other archer heroes i.e. the dark ranger and POTM.

so are you proposing that drain life be used to transfer hp to an ally target? I wouldn’t have a problem with that. It would be a bit weird though since dark ranger is more of a killing-you kind of hero rather than a helper kind of hero.

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What is the proposal?

I suggest Archers Marksmanship research also gives additional HP to them, somewhere around 75 ~ 100 (need experiment).

Why

  1. Problem: Archers can NOT be used in the late game now, mostly due to they are too vulnerable against spells. This change will help their survivability in the late game at a reasonable cost, thus encouraging their usage, without affecting tier 1 and tier 2 too much.
  2. Fairness: Other races all have tier 1 units which can still be used at tier 3, which makes them much more resource efficient, namely Orc Grunts, UD Ghouls, and HUM footies. Whereas NE currently doesn’t even have one. Archers, huntresses, and glaive throwers are just free exp at tier 3.
  3. Balance: Help address the one-sided fights where oppos can use spells and long ranged units to massacre archers, either forcing mass air, or forcing NE to units to move closely to the front and have little micro space.

Possible Influences

  1. More archer usage in late games.
  2. More varieties of NE army combinations in different matchups.
  3. Better unit micro-ability in 50+ food fights.
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I think archers were designed mainly to be converted to hippos in the late game. They’re supposed to be back line units which is why they have low HP- and why they gain a lot from merging with a hippo. And the beauty of it is you already paid part of the cost and build time when you made the archers. I don’t think a buff is justified, particularly when it would make hippos stronger as well.

When used properly as backline damage behind allies etc., archers perform as expected and do a lot of damage for a low cost- especially compared to rifles and trolls.

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Why?
Who is by far lowest pick ratio first hero in the game?
Who is one of the least played hero in the game overhaul?
Who the only have cast time on main ability?
Who’s nuke ability cost more than most heroes ultimate?
Which hero are have worst winratio as first hero in the game?
The only hero which main ability is countered by right clicking with your sweet sweet 20 apm?
Yest - its Blood mage - the least popular, worst designed hero in the game.

But i have few suggestions which will be totally ignored to make something good to this dead hero and dead game.

  • Flame strike is 135 mana, 0.8s casting (plus hero animation time btw), showing where its will land, dont hitting air, hitting your own units abomination of a ability. So I suggest few possible changes.
  1. Easy one - just make it instant or at least about 0.3 s cast time.
  2. Hard one first type - make it 100 mana but with 0.8 sec cast (make this hero lil better for creeping) and only 75% damage to buildings
    Hard one second type - 100 mana, instant damage yet make it channeling for its 3 seconds, so its will be powerful yet with obvious counterplay and 75% damage to buildings.

But flame strike isnt the only bad boy ability there, syphon mana…

  • Syphon mana lock your range hero who supposed to do damage to mana SUCK all fight instead of dealing damage, so blood mage is the only hero who is BAD with items like claws.
    Solutions:
  • Syphon becomes channeling for 3 seconds yet with lower drain power than for old 6 seconds. something like instead of 15\25\35 for 6 seconds - 25\40\55 for 3 seconds yet giving mana must be the old 6 seconds and cooldown still be 6 seconds.
  • Rework in completely to ability version of wand of mana stealing. Cost 10 mana 50\100\150 mana steal with 6 second cd, instant but without possibility to grant your mana to allies.
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Least popular? maybe. Worst designed? Hardly.

Flame strike is an extremely effective harass ability (especially for mining peasants and peons). Yes, it is telegraphed, but this is not a hinderance but a powerful tool. By casting it, you force the enemy to either move their units (and thus stop their damage output) or take a lot of damage. You are arguing your ability is “countered” by the enemy moving, but in reality, if you’re smart, forcing the enemy to move is a powerful effect. Also if you’re smart, you cast it in places where the enemy has nowhere to go.

When you use mana siphon, yes, you’re not dealing damage, but you get more mana for spells while at the same time, you’re denying the opponent the ability to cast more spells. It’s worth the trade off. Frankly I think it’s better than mana burn because you’re likely to get far more damage out of it through casting your other spells than the DH gets out of mana burn directly.

BM is not very popular, but when I see it used, I see it used to great effect. it’s not nearly as bad as you make it out to be.

3 Likes
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I’m guessing she is an intelligence hero since she is a witch? LOL

Maybe fork lightning can be buffed a bit by increasing # of targets every level, like 3/4/5. This could be a reasonable change. Note that tornado movement speed was buffed last patch though. So she’s already got something, not a lot though.

I don’t think dark ranger is a killing-you kind of hero at all. Look at her main skills today: Silence and Black Arrow… which one kills? She is definitely a helper.

Mainly talking about 1v1s.

If it’s by-design, it’s a really bad one and should be redesigned. Archers + hippos are of no use at 50 food unless NE can expand and go beyond 50. Each takes 4 food, at 50 food how many hipporiders can you get? If you get 5 mining wisps + 7 lumber wisps + 2 heroes = 22 food already. So you would get 7 hipporiders at most, and what can you do with them? They just shoot low DPS arrows and are extremely vulnerable against ranged units and spells. They can never fight a real battle.

NE almost can never expand nowadays at the top 1v1 scene. So either make solo archers better, or make expansion easier.

I would not touch Blade Mage at all. Although it might not be a good first hero choice, it’s a perfect counter against melee heavy heroes, and a freaking mana sucking machine who empowers Mountain King and Paladin. Should not expect all heroes to be first-pickable.

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she shoots arrows to kill things and make skeletons. She’s clearly evil and wants things dead to raise an undead army. Frankly silence should be removed entirely if anything and replaced with something that better fits her theming.

As for the NSW comment, I also point to the dark ranger. And the POTM. All three shoot arrows. All three have a skill that buffs their arrows. Two of the three are agility heroes. And frankly, her arrow skill is the whole reason to pick her- it’s her other skills that, if anything, need improvement. So yes, sh e makes sense to be an agility hero, because there are two quite similar heroes who are agility heroes. She also really needs the attack speed that is associated with agility to ensure she can keep enemies slowed.

So get bears and put your archers behind them. You don’t need an ally to guard your archers.

Archers give a lot of value for little cost. It’s entirely reasonable that the trade-off is their vulnerability.

I would love a Blade Mage, it’s too bad it doesn’t exist. Sounds like an awesome concept though! :rofl:

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But she doesn’t have enough damage to really kill an oppo’s unit most of the time. See? She benefits from kills but she can’t really do it herself. That’s why she’s not a killing-you kind of hero but only a helper.

NSW agility main would be imba. Frost arrow is a good enough control already. Agility would make the control too strong by adding attacking speed. No one hero should keep enemy controlled. No need for that buff. Let the witch remain an intelligence hero.

Do bears stop enemy heroes from casting spells? Front row doesn’t matter since they are too vulnerable. They can just ignore bears or MG’s to kill archers first, making them freebies in high food fights and completely unusable.

Typo~

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There’s nothing “imba” about it. The only thing primary attribute means is which stat adds damage per point.

NSW is good early but trash late, because she does comparatively little damage. making her main stat the one you want anyway for the benefit of her main skill (yes, the cold arrows are her main skill) will keep her relevant later in the game, and it can be incredibly easily balanced by decreasing her initial agility or base damage by a point or two if it’s actually a problem. Don’t just think of the problem, think of the solution.

Again, you’re looking at the wrong thing. Melee units in front of ranged units is an incredibly basic RTS concept. It’s not about stopping enemies from casting spells, it’s about making your ranged units harder to reach with those spells. This isn’t rocket science, it’s not even pro play, it’s just RTS basics.

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Completely wrong. If Naga is agility main, her agility growth per level also faster. Her attack speed will be faster and faster. Right now Naga gains 1 agility 3 intelligence per level. Are you saying changing her primary attribute without touching attribute growth per level? That would be funny.

She is completely relevant later in the game, with Forked lightning right now, especially for NE. Watch more games.

If the most used melee units cannot make the ranged units harder to reach or kill, then the basic is broken. So making them harder to kill will fix it.

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Completely wrong. The scaling per level is set entirely indepdently of which attribute is set as the primary attribute. Different heroes have different scaling for all three stats, regardless of which attribute is primary. The only thing Primary Attribute specficially does is cause that stat to increase damage by 1 per point.

If this is happening, then you’re doing it wrong. I’m complete trash at this game and even I can handle the basic concept of front-line vs back-line units. If your melee aren’t able to protect your ranged units, then you picked a fight in a disadvantageous position and your unit losses were deserved.

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Yeah so you are saying you want Naga to be agility main and only has 1 agility but 3 intelligence per level up, that’s absolutely funny.

That’s it. You should either watch or play the game more to see how UD heroes cross bears and coil nova archers with little cost. In fact, the spell range is too long to the extent that they don’t even need to cross the frontrow!

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I think you’re forgetting the fact that those numbers can also be changed? Like, are you really that dense?

These are problems that have solutions, there’s about a thousand different ways you can change or rebalance something. I mean, are you kidding me?

And the reality is yes, I would happily make that trade, because I don’t need tons of mana, I need a hero that isnt as weak. And if INT isn’t your main stat, mana max and regen is all it affects… I mean… you know this right?

If you want to tear down my case you have to account for stuff like this lol. It’s just common sense. Since you seem to be objecting to improving NSW in general, maybe you should focus on the reasons it shouldn’t be rebalanced, rather than criticizing ultra specific aspects of my proposed method of rebalancing it.

But in reality, I think you’re just trying to tear me down because I didn’t like your idea.

1 Like
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and yeah, you’re doing it wrong. If he can get close enough to coil archers (which I would argue isn’t the best use of it in that kind of scenario, as it’s better used to quickly take down the big threats rather than pick off a single archer), well, hes putting his hero in a vulnerable position you should be taking advantage of.

Granted, every situation is different, and I never suggested that such basic tactics are impentrable, but it it has an impact on the outcome of a fight. If they want to go for your archers, they have to move closer.

And all of this entirely ignores the fact that archers have huge late game utility already, unlike the other race’s ranged units which are mostly just damage. Mounting and dismounting can be exploited to save units, both the archer and the hippo become more versatile as you can choose to use them seperately or together to achieve different ends, etc. etc.

Archers do not need a buff of HP. This would also buff hippo riders too, so yeah. It’s not a good idea and I’m not seeing the weakness in NE on the W3C stats. in fact, across all levels of play, NE seems to be the highest performer right now. That doesn’t mean there is nothing that needs improving, but right now NE is in a good position according to W3C’s stats, so I’m skeptical of any need to buff NE in any way, except maybe tweaking potm and/or warden a bit since demon hunter and keeper dominate the NE meta by miles. And I must emphasize, this isn’t me eyeballing here, this is based on the stats from w3champions.com .

To be fair, NSW is currently the most picked tavern hero, though DK, Archmage, Lich and DH are all more popular by a significant margin. Which is why I’m not proposing anything dramatic. My only goal is to make the NSW less of a deadweight if the game doesn’t end early. She’s great in early game but becomes a liability in the late game because she just lacks the basic damage.

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Right, so you are making Naga agility main and tune the attributes per level too, which means Naga probably gets more agility per level than now, which means her attack speed becomes faster and faster, then her control is stronger and stronger and probably too strong.

But her control is not a problem right now, it’s already good enough. Why buffing it and introduce more problems? I really don’t think it’s necessary to touch Naga at all right now.

I don’t think there’s a huge problem if Naga is only good early/mid game. Maybe she is not as good late game, but she’s def not a liability.

The problem is even if you do the basics perfectly, it’s still worth it for the oppo to cast spells and massacre archers first, if you have a few of them. So after so many iterations, pros decide not to get too many archers, only a few in the early/mid game as a transition. Then the race always needs to get other backrow units to confront a fight, those units have low damage and shorter attack range that’s making micro’ing even harder, and the race is economically not as inefficient as the other races which can always use tier 1 units.

W3C stats at all level don’t tell you how things look at the extreme scenarios, whereas top tourney results show you how things really are if players are able to macro/micro at the absolute top level, i.e. after all the potential are almost exhausted, how the balance looks like. So if you are looking at W3C stats only, you won’t be able to draw the right conclusion.

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Please just work for mac. thats all i ask

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All levels need to be considered when making balance changes. This game is not solely for pros. TBF looking at different levels of play seperately will give more accurate information than the combined stats. But for the record, I also looked at this, and for the most part, the win rates are similar at each tier, with some exceptions.

Some units become stronger and weaker depending on mechanical skills like APM and micro, but more than that, the general approach players take to the game varies a lot by level of play- pro players don’t just press more buttons, they have a different play style and approach compared to others. Thus, when you make balance changes, you have to be careful such that a change that seems fine for the pros doesn’t ruin the game for the rank-and-file playerbase that is the majority of people playing this game.

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Well, here’s my bunch of highly requested features, which most of them are 20 years old.
I won’t repeat the suggestions made by other youtubers. I might have myself forgot some of mine too.

Pathfinding

Warcraft 3 has a hardcoded limit of how many units can move per player, which is roughly 50. Plenty sufficient for melee & campaigns, atrocious for custom games. I bet there’s only one constant somewhere to unlock it.
Have you noticed when moving too many units, only a handfull walks 3 meters by 3 meters ? The pathfinding cuts the distance into bits which the units goes from one point to another. When not overcharged it goes smoothly, but when reaching a critical mass it becomes unplayable. Back in the early 2000s this was relevant due to the poor overall computer power of that time. Right now any basic laptop from 2020 may run Warcraft 3 SD.
☼ Raise the limit to at least 500 per player
☼ Make this limit customizable in the map editor to make it higher or lower (if performance is an issue)

Selection

Macro management gets very tedious, especialy in custom games.
☼ Make the selection size at least customizable in the game options, for example up to 48
☼ Make the selection size customizable in map editor, and able to be changed in the runtime for each player separately
☼ The UI design should looks like Starcraft 2 with different tabs, maybe with 3 then 4 rows when the player reaches 13 and 19 units.

Formation

Unit formation has right now two modes. However, the space between units is based on the collision size of the biggest unit. That’s why your bunch of running peasant tends to stack together while ancients love to spread apart like Norwegians at a bus stop.
I would suggest adding two more modes :
☼ Fix 32 collision ray
☼ Average collision ray
In both case, if the biggest unit is larger than the spread, it will bent it a bit so it fits.
☼ Make this customizable in map editor and in the runtime for each players

Fixes

☼ Destroy ALL memory leaks from native functions of the game
☼ Make the editor not crash when going back from sleep mode
☼ Fix the AI so it won’t no longer attempt billions times to place a building, which freezes the game every second
☼ Some items abilities don’t even care about their level. Fix that.

Reconnect

☼ it is self explanatory

TRUE crossplay

☼ Bring back the old interface, with maybe some higher resolution textures
☼ Both clients are perfectly synced, but the older has NO reforged nor HD available (so no longer that ugly blizzard browser actually eating more RAM than the base game… WHY BLIZZARD WHYYYY)
☼ At least make an option to NOT download HD assets in the files.
☼ Being able to select which balance patch is used in custom games

Remake the HD graphics

The SD+ from Starcraft 2 started really well. By basing ourselves on the old artistic direction we can keep the juice of the old game with modernized assets.
☼ Remake the HD graphics so they at least go from ugly to ok
☼ Optimize the HD models and remove their mipmap level (or at least implement them !)
☼ Integrate the many fixed models made by the community (mostly by Ujimasa Hojo from the Hiveworkshop) into the SD mode

Sound

☼ Being able to select from the old and new soundsets for localized games. The new french dub is mostly uglier (the peasant got from a endearing simpleton into an anoying Homer Simpson…)
☼ Upscale the current sounds, with AI I don’t care
☼ Upscale the musics, you surely have the original projects somewhere. Export them with an higher resolution. You don’t need a fat Wav format, but at least a good modern one.

Map making functions

☼ Get the unit group currently highlighted in the player UI (it is “possible” but with a lot of workaround which aren’t very sync safe)
☼ Being able to add and expand soundsets (instead of replacing)
☼ Unlimited tileset & cliff pallet
☼ Collision mask for units (like in Godot) to check which unit collide with which layer
☼ Being able to add unit types (mechanical, tauren, undead, etc) and check them in other data fields
☼ Being able to add attack/armor types
☼ Being able to add more than 2 attacks per unit
☼ Unlimited transport size (the hardcoded limit right now is 10)
☼ Being able to change the pierce through damage delay (right now it is fix, i.e. storm hammers)
☼ Being able to set the grid size and scale in map settings and in the runtime for each player/unit. Right now it is 4x3 with 100% scale.
☼ Being able to set the item grid ; idem : right now it’s 2x3 with 75% (?) scale
☼ Being able to add more hero abilities, right now it is hard coded to be 5.
☼ Being able to add resources types (as well as supply types !)
☼ Being able to add race selection in custom lobbies (I don’t say adding races in the base game, but the custom map might have a custom race which is more convenient to select directly in the lobby instead of a custom made selection screen at start…)
☼ Being able to set an ability/buff stackable or not (like for poison)
☼ Being able to add multiple building list buttons for a unit
☼ Being able to set the check period for auras (right now it’s like 0.25s) and for how long they persist when outside

EULA

☼ Remove that damn mention where you own our maps. No you don’t. Steal our ideas if you want but it’s not yours.

I’m gonna stop there because I would add at least 3x more stuff while I got bigger fish to fry.

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  • FINALLY, after all those DECADES, implement the REALLY SIMPLE feature to be able to finally reconnect to the game. This absurd has been going for way too long.
  • ban all those re*** trolls starting RT just to leave immidiatelly. For ages sh!tzzard has not done a single act of improving the community in that matter