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Improved Melee Race
Contestants were to create an improved or at least an alternate version of the current Warcraft 3 races, be it Human/ Orc/ Undead/ Night Elf/ Naga. The race created must fit the name of the race you picked and must have many similarities to the original one (lore- and concept-wise).
- Wraithling's Air Humans
- VeljkoM's Undead
- Vermillion Edict's Alterac Race
- JokeMaster's High Elves
- Lich Prince's Old Horde
- Fuzzyfury's Forsaken
- GhostThruster's Naga
- Narogog's Kirin Tor
- 67chrome's Illidari
- Sage Chows' Night Elves
- Xiliger's Horde
- Wazzz's Evil Humans
1) Lich Prince
2) FuzzyFury
A pretty balanced race, with some handy features, but also a bearer of wrong calculations.
a) Gameplay
The race seems to focus a lot on surviveability, when the stats should concern you more.
- Tombs: They have an auto-active ability that replenishes hp. The concept is similar to the Replenish Mana and Life from the Night Elves, but that one is way more powerful, since it also restores mana. Their size is kind of big, making them look like barracks, which is sort of confusing.
- Forsaken Guard Tower: Organising your first and only defense after the first townhall upgrade is pretty lame, because you limit the gameplay options of a player, forcing them to build up their defense mid- or late-game. Early game is excluded. The unit is a copy paste of the original Guard Tower, but setting the gold cost up to 120 achieves a good balance.
- Forsaken Barracks: Primary troop production center, which actually trains Forsaken Ghouls of minor role. Here comes the balance issue I previously mentioned. On the first hand, the Forsaken Ghoul is cheap in gold and food cost and fast in training event; on the other hand, it constitutes a pretentious warrior. With a maximum health of 150 and the lowest damage of all units in the race, it is downgraded compared to the summoned skeletons of Val'kyrs. So, when summoned units have no food and gold cost, they are still more powerful than this unit.
I honestly wouldn't bother creating masses of these Ghouls to aid my allies against enemy bases early game. I speak of early game, because the Forsaken Guard Towers leave no space for defensive build-up, so it would most likely turn into an offensive case.
Furthermore, when Tombs heal nearby units, Mordo, the Undertaker and Sylvanas Windrunner, the Banshee Queen contribute in that as well, I wouldn't spend mana in healing such units.
- Val'kyr: Another pretentious unit or a wanna-be warrior. The damage is insanely low, considering the fact that she spawns one skeleton at a time and her health is so low. The invisibility spell is out of place and I have two reasons for that:
1) She will be spending so much mana on the corpse summoning, that the invisibility skill will totally not pay off. The only way to avoid this issue is to buff up the whole troops with the Forsaken Banshee, by using Anti-magic shield, but seriously, I doubt anyone would bother doing that.
2) Although I know Humans have it too, I find it unsuitable for one of your units to make another unit invisible and the Apothecary to remove buffs from friendly units too. I would definitely trigger a custom ability to only dispel negative buffs, simply because it's another strategy-pooper.
- Blight Spreader: A decent way to train units, by making them look like buildings, I like that. What I would change is where the upgrade can be researched from. I'd add it in the Forsaken Blacksmith, simply because enabling the construction/training of a unit within a structure that doesn't train it, doesn't make sense.
- Death Guards: They look like they have the role of the Mountain Giants, but, at least those ones literally have greater defensive capabilities and ways to improve their damage output. So, the Death Guards are warriors that take raw damage and by extension they look like kamikaze.
- Tomb of Relics: Moonstone shouldn't be there. You are not using night-specific abilities, neither your units regenerate during night.
The gameplay is rather weak, compared to what you were supposed to do, judging from the fact that 10/30 points derive from the "Gameplay" criterium.
3.5 / 10
b) Strategy
The race offers various strategies troops-wise. A game is divided into two ways of playing: Offensive and Defensive. The fact that the first upgrade is the introduction to defensive style of playing, is a factor that already dooms a variety of options. This is a definite con.
What I can make out though is the fact that there are several units to choose from and play accordingly. You have two tanks, the Forsaken Abomination and the Death Guard. Against undeads, you would probably play with Death Guards, because they have greater health and they are not dependent on Cannibalize for surviveability, since Undeads would exterminate any corpse with their necromancers.
The bad thing though is that it shares so many abilities from the Undead race, that they look like twins. I can barely notice any difference, except for the Flaming Breath, which frankly looks out of place (concept-wise). This means that the race is in fact a simple race editing (proof, no triggers).
I keep in mind that the race looks like a copy-paste of its original one (Banshees and Gargoyles are nothing more but a transfer), the fact that that you didn't add any extra features that overstrip the common Warcraft 3 tactical events.
4.3 / 10
c) Philosophy
There were some flaws with it, but I will mention them in the Appearance criterium. Other than that, I of course felt I played with the Undead race (mostly because you used many things from it).
4 / 5 (for overusing the original race)
d) Appearance
The appearance flaws:
- Flaming Breath on an Undead unit with an energy-type concept (and not the one of the Burning Legion) is not in-concept.
- Invisibility, I'd rather you called it differently.
- Moonstone, out of concept (gameplay-wise as well)
- Forsaken Guard Tower and Fortress are Human, not Undead. Most structures have skulls on them and other gruesome effects.
- The laborers' animations are played even after the first summoning of the buildings, which makes it confusing.
- The units you borrowed from the Undead race are renamed into "Forsaken xxx". A flag to my eyes to show me which ones you didn't change.
3.2 / 5
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Total: 15 / 30
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3) Narogog
Really unique race, great feeling, many coding and imbalanced stuff.
a) Gameplay
So many to say, don't know where to begin from.
- Trained units: I noticed that several towers train same unit-types, e.g. Adept can be trained in both Citadel of the Higher Arts and Magi Tower.
- Gate way: It can be pointed towards any point, which is overpowered. You can basically bend the timespace to outrun tracts of forests. This can be suicidal as well, because you can be heading towards a fully defensive town or let the enemies enter your town. A building that can target any point on the map except for the classic Revealing action seems to be either overpowered or something you didn't think quite well.
- Tower abilities: Almost my point for the "Gate way". The mass banishing and the Elemental Storm afterwards seems to be the most powerful combination to tear your enemy's base apart. I know it's appealing to play it safe and destroy from distance, but how would you react, if you had such an enemy to face?
I don't even want to mention the superb amounts of damage, which is enough to bring the whole enemy town health level to 50%. Most of them, which are periodic, should stop when ordering the tower to "Stop", you should make them channeling.
- Arcane Ship: Excellent concept, I really love it, but, a transport ship that is able of attacking, casting Cloud and replenish nearby units' mana is a mix of hardcore power. For its concept, I'd only leave the role of the transporting unit and maybe the cloud, so that it has a synergy with the fact that it will unload units from within. The rest stuff don't fit.
- Mage and Adept: They have the same model; way too confusing for a race with so many units.
- Void Scout: Void Bolt deals great damage and for an early game, where you can actually train this unit, it's a lot of damage to face. Damage increased from Mage to Void Scout is simply fake; the Void can't attack being ethereal, it only casts parasite.
- Siege Breaker: Rain of Fire's duration is too much. No unit will be staying within radius for 60 waves of burning damage. Quake's duration is always too high, considering that a single unit can do this. Although the damage is lower than the Earthquake of the Far Seer, the duration is double.
- Summon Building: Really nice ability, but doesn't seem to work.
- Aura of Mastery: It's good that you balance its power, by damaging the tower itself, but sometimes it stacks, making endless damage to itself.
- Shield Battle Training: I might be wrong, but it doesn't seem to work.
- Illusionist: You definitely forgot to add cooldown on this. With a mana cost of 100 and a maximum mana of 400 and several mana replenishing sources, such as Tower of Mastery, Mana Nodes and Arcane Ships, this is the deadliest mage. It can continuously spawn illusions without any break point, that can lag and bug the graphics of the game.
- Protection: Another really nice ability and well balanced; you should increase the damage dealth though. It also conflicts with the channeling mages.
- Fire Trap: A defensive (offensive, I'd say) building with really low hit points, it needs some nerf up.
- Summoning Ritual: It performs the same operation to Gate Way. Was it really necessary as an ultimate? Why having two of them?
- Spread Corruption: The damage bonus is a great boost, but the armor reduction is a pain, especially for units with so many channeling abilities. However, I admit that Banish ability balances it up. Cast Spread Corruption on yourself and then Banish yourself, to avoid physical damage (which by extension makes the -12 armor pretty worthless).
- Dirt to Gold: You actually boost the gold output of every gold mine, be it yours or an ally's or an enemy's or a neutral one. Why would a single unit have that kind of power? I think it's overpowered to take over the control of every gold mine on the map.
There are many more to note. Although I like the idea, I'm afraid it gets too complicated, because each unit has a variety of abilities that fit a hero instead and the options to create an army are vast. It definitely introduces a new way of playing, since it has almost nothing to do with classic warcraft 3 gameplay. It brings forth new forces at your disposal and most of them have a unique role, no matter if they share the ultimate aim: powerful casters corrupting everything they touch.
So,
Pros: New ways of playing
Cons: You were so absorbed of creating a bunch of stuff, that you forgot to balance them.
They are a bunch of stuff that makes the war scene kind of unclear.
For that, I will give it a
6.5 / 10
b) Strategy
I already mentioned that the variety of spells and spellcasters adhere the goal of any player: win the game. It's not only the numbers that make the abilities powerful (which, as I previously said, should be definitely fixed), it's their nature as well. Massive illusions (an example) of your ally units is a definite yes for an offensive tactic.
Channeling mages can also stay in the defensive line, while having tanks, such as Battle Golems take the primary damage in the front line. There are buffers, debuffers, damage dealers, support units, you can pretty much find everything in this race.
Although Strategy is dependent on Gameplay and a complicated Gameplay leads to an unclear strategy, I still have to approve of this variety of units, tossed into a unique game style.
8 / 10
c) Philosophy
Transformation into Void Walkers seems a bit out of place.
4 / 5
d) Appearance
One thing I found frustrating was the tooltips. They really needed some extra work. Your mage and adept unit share the same model, resulting confusion. Some of the units also share same icons, which is a mistake unforgivable in official gaming (among the race itself, not various races sharing same icons).
2.5 / 5
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Total: 21 / 30
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4) 67Chrome
A great looking race, but I shouldn't be carried away by that. Although the abilities look perfect, they are too perfect and that's a reason why this race is unbeatable. Let's move on to the actual case:
a) Gameplay
The gameplay doesn't introduce anything innovative, the race lacks standard buildings compared to the original Warcraft 3's style, but that's not the issue; the issue is that I can pretty much empower my army with the "legendary" warriors early in game. Another issue is not the stats themselves, it's the abilities that bring pain to any unit that happens to be their target. Most of them are original, but they are heavily based on periodic attacks, which leaves no space for leaving the battle, since the maximum potential derives from directly facing the enemies.
Another thing I noticed is that all of them are either passive or autocast, building up a path to an easy flow of the game.
- Structures: Really low amount and although you were not supposed to copy and paste the original Warcraft's racial structures count, they still lack a lot in number. Two reasons why they make the gameplay too easy: The player is not burdened with creating multiple structures to boost the damage of the troops, so that leaves space for resources and time and at the same time the base is really small, compared to a third-tier race. Finally, you depend on the building queue too much to build your army, since every possible warrior unit is trained through a single structure-type.
- Nether Focus: In my opinion, the damage each of these are causing is enough, so, Mana replenishment doesn't make sense here. You turned the concept of a single food production construction into a polymorphic role. A structure that damages, replenishes mana of nearby units and provides food at the same time with such a low resource cost is the result of wrong calculations. I would make the damage a toggle ability, which, while it is on, the structures may receive 20% extra damage. It's also the way Warcraft 3 is coded, that made the enemy waves flee before the Nether Focus's damage.
- Return Resources: The invisibility skill also works for building structures. I would only keep it to that, removing the ability to become invisible when returning the resources, because invisible workers doesn't make great sense in the first place. I've also notices that Training Grounds can work as a lumber drop-off point. Again not much sense, especially when the resulting size of a single Illidari town is really small.
- Lack of Tiers: Tiers are not only a gameplay material, that unlocks certain unit types, but they also add a concept that the town passes from era to era. This feeling is missing from this race. The gameplay is very static already, with a few buildings to decorate the town. What is more, tiers would define the count of heroes possible to be trained.
- Upgrade buildings: Halls of Anguish and Tempest Sanctuary have the same role. If you really needed two structures for that, then you either were out of ideas or you added many upgrades. To my eyes, you added extra, unnecessary upgrades.
- Illidari Astromancers: For some reason, some of them used to have negative regeneration, causing them to constantly use their Nova ability. I also don't see why they are flying units; although I loved their whole concept, I wouldn't make them flying, they are not that powerful for this role. Their damaging nature kind of contradicts with their healing role, another case you should refine.
- Coilskar Predator: Their damage is insanely low and you probably thought that since each attack summons a water elemental, you get an equation of balance. I'm afraid I don't find it balanced at all. A new unit for each attack (which also applies on Attack Ground as well) is way too much. I don't even know why this unit has AoE attack, when it has such a low damage output.
- Illidari Siegebreaker: The way you triggered the skill (circular area damage), causes them to attack allied units as well. You already have enough of units with Attack Ground ability, so, I'd definitely not add this kind of an AoE here. Distance difference as bonus damage is already fine.
- Durance: This skill also attacks buildings and it already has a high duration. I'd leave it only able of attacking normal units and the ones trapped within, not units out of the circle.
- Bonechewer Brute: This unit was rather weak and I would hardly buy a lot of, to boost my army's battle capabilities. It was redundant, nor I would bother using it debuff against the enemies. Most units have passives already and the active here seems to be rather boring to use.
- Solarous: The damage prevention is a lot, considering that most ladder spells deal low damage. Its duration is also too high. I'd decrease damage prevention down to 150 and duration to 45 seconds. It's a single unit that only wastes 75 out of 400 mana to cast it.
Generally, the gameplay was fun, I have to say. It was the special effects and the nature of each ability that made it feel like that. Of course, since most of abilities were passive, you cannot discover the potential of each in practice (e.g. distance based damage - Siegebreakers) and the active ones were anything but fun. The race didn't introduce anything new, while basic stuff was missing from the race, leaving a feeling of absense in most parts.
6 / 10
b) Strategy
Strategy on the other hand was even better than the gameplay. Each unit has had serious tactics to follow, since they had been gradually stabilizing the maximum potency of their skills, leading to innovative strategies, that classic Warcraft 3 doesn't have, while the units serve for raw damage or raw buffing/debuffing. I can think of a hundred of battle tactics with these unit-types.
8 / 10
c) Philosophy
No problems here,
5 / 5
d) Appearance
Well, in my humble opinion, the best looking race.
5 / 5
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Total: 24 / 30
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5) Sage Chow
A really nice race with various aspects a player would like to try. Carefully designed and a bunch of ideas to craft a decent result.
a) Gameplay
I have to say, techtree-wise, there was nothing new, buildings and/or upgrades unlocking the more powerful elements of the race.
The flow of the game was not quite new, but it definitely had intriguing features.
The features that stand out are the day-/nightlight and the sun/rain events. Each of them offers eligible bonuses, calling the player to program themselves into playing accordingly.
- Venolia/Pyrolia Seeds: Apparently, as destructables, Nymphs could target them and gather lumber from them, which looked a little weird.
- Spirit Link: Although the Nymph can revert the action and let the seed return to its original state, when nymph leaves the plant, that plant is destroyed. It shouldn't be, obviously. What is more, the plants themselves are quite weak for a static warrior, so, their awakekening via nymphs was not the best option. In most cases, these plants die when they engage themselves in battle, so, that's a waste of a Nymph.
- Seed: Useless sub-function, that creates a seed on death. Unless you have Autumn Druid, the Nymph is already dead, so you would need an additional Nymph to raise the recently created plant.
- Track: This skill also tracks dead units, which is confusing.
- Spore: I don't think it should be targetting allies. The race is supposed to be immune to certain natural affections.
- Turtle Spirit: These units cannot attack buildings, which is a huge question as to how supportive they can be in an enemy's base.
- Healing Sun: Shouldn't this skill turn night into day? Otherwise, its concept is not defined. Plus, it was available from level 4, not the standard 6.
- Water Reservoir: On a map that doesn't have water areas, the skill is useless. I couldn't successfully test it.
- Sun Worship: This upgrade shouldn't be hosted within Temple. For its generic enhancing effect, I'd use Sylvan Armory.
- Hardened Skin (Turtle Spirit): I don't think the extra 150 hp was necessary. The unit is not a tank, otherwise you should use "Normal" attack type and it already has a damage return and a Hardened Skin, with a preset hp pool of 950.
- Sentry Tower: The upgrade time was rather fast. It should be around 20, since maximum food is not affected.
- Repetetive abilities: I was anything but glad to see that some abilities were used on different unit-types, e.g. Mountain Druid's Four Seasons ability: Spring summon has the same ability to Druid's.
- Four Seasons: The summons possess static abilities, so Lunar Chant is available at daylight as well. I think it should be changed to follow the theme of the race much better.
Great features, that made the game flow quite impressive. I can't say it was fun though, because I kept on focusing on what weather to create, up to my units' output and what time of the day I should be origanising my assaults. It was complex in the part, where I couldn't determine whether each passive ability (Chlorophyll, etc.) would be the appropriate one for each respective unit. Stats-wise, the mana pools were big. You've managed to get a basic concept of time-spells (night-day) the Night Elves have and extend it to some greater concept. I have to admit though, the day cycles to night and back forth, resulting a race that doesn't always express its full potential.
6 / 10
b) Strategy
I basically think that Strategy is the identity of this race. You are making your move, up to the time of day and you select the respective unit-types to fight with. Each unit type had a variety of abilities and their passive ones, race-defined (e.g. Chlorophyll), raised several tactics.
9 / 10
c) Philosophy
Excellent.
5 / 5
d) Appearance
Some minor tooltip changes would be good (Spelling errors). You should also enhance the tooltips to mention exactly what alterations the units would sustain, passing from night to day and vice versa.
3.5 / 5
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Total: 23.5 / 30
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6) GhostThruster
There were some gameplay issues, but I have had a nice feeling, playing with this race.
a) Gameplay
The way you decided to code some stuff prevented you from investigating every possible case.
- Lumber gathering: When a coral bed is destroyed, the gatherers keep on collecting lumber. Apart from that, basing the collection of a resource off a single building makes up a bad gameplay output, if you happen to lose the defensive lines in early stages of the game.
- Megamorph: Great addition, loved it in a classic melee gaming, but I would use it for a hero instead; it's the nature of the skill that disables multiple units, power that only a hero should have.
- Upgrade 1: Unfortunately, I had to upgrade the tier quite fast, because there are not enough of options to fight with. The hero and several Water Hounds is your first army, before heading to Infectors, for which you need to build Reliquary and I admit I cannot figure why this is involved. You could remove it; a single requirement for early game is enough, in my opinion. When the enemy's first wave came into my base, I could hardly defend the town, just with an army of Water Hounds.
- Lumber resource: Doesn't fit with the concept of how it is gathered. Several trees standing around and Barnacle Turtles unable of targeting them is quite inchorent. You could rename the resource into "Aqua Essence" for example, since the way the lumber is gathered is really cool.
- Water Mark: A nice AoE skill, but it should have its mana cost increased.
- Wall of Frost: Simply excellent. The bad thing is that the slow is not an actual AoE, so, if a unit leaves the area of effect, they will still be slowed.
- General debuff output: There was not a real variety of debuffs among the race: slow, knockback and purge were the main hits, resulting a really powerful race in the end.
- Myrmidon: Two disables on the same unit doesn't make sense. I'd remove the Binding Net and add some individual passive skill, that increases attack speed (so as to combine it with Frost ability). The Wall of frost could still hit a Frosted unit, so you should make a check if the unit is invulnerable.
- Ethereal: Not a really fitting name, ethereal represents the substance, I don't see it standing as a unit's name. Ether Shift and Typhoon are hard to control in the heat of battle. Two channeling abilities won't result the highest potential possible for this unit, especially when it bears the Water Mark, which is an autocast ability = delay in buffing. Ether Shift causes problems; end of channeling didn't always remove the buff from the units, so I needed a Couatl to buff them out.
- Magic Hunger: It was castable without the upgrade needed.
- Tunnel: The "hidden" unit kept losing emitted buffs of nearby units. So, this becomes an anti-synergy for the regeneration bonus the Deepsea Aura provides, which would grant further surviveability.
- Abyss Forge: It seemed too pretentious as a building and rather useless. I'd like to see some building upgrades, since you already had the item that could restore lost hit points.
- Turtle Banacle: Unable of targetting anything but buildings; this means that you'd have them attacking only the enemy base itself, if you are using them in an offensive manner. Their speed was too slow though, so it's a case brought under the umbrella of the impossible.
- The gold mine is not destroyed after reaching the amount of 0.
- Your skills turn some enemy buildings into invulnerable (bad coding), so, I can't get victorious, if I spawn certain units.
Not many problems with the gameplay, I in fact liked:
> Turtle Banacles able of loading units in them.
> Water Mark plus Deepsea Aura for greater surviveability.
> Splitting the Basilisks apart, along with the upgrade that let them stun nearby enemies.
> Megamorph
> Tunnel
I believe there is some potential in introducing a new style of playing, but not anything surreal. The gameplay was quite fun, since it had loads of abilities to torment your enemies.
7 / 10
b) Strategy
Your debuffs' variety was rather limited, as I mentioned before. So, this fact also limits the strategies a player can take. Why? Because whether you are using an army of Water Hounds or an army of Basilisks, except for their stats, their effectiveness is quite the same. Ethereals can also be used in knockbacking, exactly like Basilisks split themselves, while knockbacking.
A great strategy that I can clearly anticipate is multiple Turtoises, tunnelled into the ground. Then, a massive Lay Egg fire up and the enemy base can be semi-destroyed.
While the race itself mostly uses slow attacks [Water Hounds, Basilisks, Etherals (through the Etheral Shift), Watcher's Warp Flurry, etc.], you also have knockback and immobility cases, that prevent units from taking damage. I find the race 'confused', it's as if you wanted to bunch it up with certain debuffs for pure ownage.
You mostly got abilities do the job, not stats, which is not the recipe to perfect balance. If I go for offensive strategy, I'll use Myrmidons and Basilisks, if I go for "hidden" attacks, I'll use Turtoises.
The Couatles are unnecessary, I didn't use them in game, at all.
I can hardly make up alternative strategies that deverge the classic "army build-up and slaughter everything".
4 / 10
c) Philosophy
You have placed much ice concept in the race and I am not sure if Naga have to do with ice. Water is different from Ice, which most likely refers to Undead and the Frozen Throne.
3 / 5
d) Appearance
Nothing wrong with it, I liked every model used, from unit models to effect models.
5 / 5
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Total: 19 / 30
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7) Wazzz
Many gameplay issues and a race not well defined.
a) Gameplay
- Sell units: This is a bad addition. Selling over training doesn't have a rally point to lead bought units to a pre-defined point. While upgrading, you can't add units to be sold in the queue. So, we have a problem here, because the player must focus on their camp all the time, to lead recenetly bought (trained) units to the main troops' activity.
- Hideout: It can attack, without the need of Brigands to be loaded within. So, I really find no reason to load them in. What is more, each of them can only load a single brigand, so that would require a great amount of them to hide them all for like no reason.
- Lack of tiers: The fact that I can practically buy units that are supposedly of late-game power makes things pretty predictable: take down any enemy wave early game and become victorious quite fast.
- Mercenary Camp: The problem I mentioned on "Sell units" and "Hideout" cases. You can't define where the trained units will move to, they are simply bought and stand there and they can be loaded in the mercenary camp for no apparent reason. Defending the camp with the presence of hideouts is not the overt way to sucessfully defend. You should at least make buildings attack, when units were loaded within them and boost their damage output, up to the number of loaded units.
- Hero: You can spawn many heroes of the same type, without any limit, as if they are normal warriors. One thing to point out here is lack of variety and originality. Another thing to point out is that several heroes that constitute your troops will die, resulting a spam of heroes' death messages. There is a reason why default Warcraft 3 sets a maximum of 3 heroes at the same time and each of them trainable after an upgrade. You would want to build your heroes item-wise, how exactly will you achieve that, if you create so many of them? Plus, each hero gains a level; spawning additional heroes, later in game, of level 1, once again, will result a complexity of handling them. Obviously, each of them has a powerful set of abilities, which cry out to be used and a variety of levels can result an unpredictable fight.
- Pack Horses: Nice addition to serve as drop-off point, but other than that, useless. Why should I be spamming their creation, when the main hall can also serve the same role? You could at least add an ability, that moves them forward and slow the speed of nearby enemies. For each enemy affected, the speed is further increased. You could also make some riding feature, to make alternative warriors in a race that has a really low variety of.
- Flying Machine: Another loading unit. A simple transportation that shares the role of the classic goblin Flying Machine. Nothing interesting or new.
- Lack of upgrades: You didn't add any upgrades, so, the damage output of your troops is raw and static. You needed to work on that.
I can't say the gameplay was fun, I in fact was annoyed by the absence of rally point in the primary troop building. It does introduce new ways of playing with the loading part and the simple look, but it needed to be worked out way more.
3 / 10
b) Strategy
No strategy here, just waiting for the stock to replenish itself and boost your troops' strength. Lack of rally points doesn't offer new strategies anyway, you missed main stuff here.
2 / 10
c) Philosophy
No problem with it, as I previously mentioned, life can have various aspects, so does the human behaviour (from holy to evil).
5 / 5
d) Appearance
- Workers: Would need another model, because you can't currently see whether they carry any resource or not.
- Book of the Dead: Not fitting for humans to be frank.
- Tooltips: Some remained untouched (I could see Fairie Dragons in Mana Flare ability, Summon Water Elemental in Book of the Dead ability, etc.)
3 / 5
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Total: 14 / 30
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8) Wraithling
The embodiment of what I asked, but certain features disturbed me.
a) Gameplay
- Mini Gyrocopter: I don't think it should have a resources recycling condition, because summons are not created with resources in the first place. Its role was also unclear; I'd increase the damage output and add a life expiration.
- Black Market: Lumber trading was what I felt most disappointed with. It desolated the whole innovation of the race, since I had to trade the lumber all the time. I would create abilities, that would work like "programs" and the trading to be done over the time, automatically. The manual trading felt really boring. The stock time of the items was high, when the market was initially built. I also didn't like the fact that a patron should be nearby, when lumber trading was within. It should be always available for trading.
- Flame Junk: The cooldown could be set to 11 seconds for every level, it was not that powerful anyway.
- Scout Machine: The unit didn't make sense to be trained off the town hall. I would also add True Sight to them, because Priestess of the Moon wastes only mana to create such unit and you buy it in this case.
- Morale Boost: The message should definitely be represented by an expiring timer, than a game message.
- Defend: This skill on Spearmen should be adjusted into lower stats, since you overpower them.
- Tiers: I don't see why tiers are based on recycling. Recycling is an extra feature, not a must. Of course you would upgrade your resource-recycling, but forcing the player to do so is by no means mandatory.
- Flare: An ability being bore by three unit types doesn't offer new gameplay aspects, it instead makes the ability too common.
- Mediocopter: Their EMP ability didn't make anything to buildings in particular, as the tooltip states. I wouldn't leave them attackless, because their main role is to destroy enemies' mana. While they do that, they could use some attack to gain an effective role. Other than that, I found them quite useless. I wouldn't want o upgrade up to Tier 2, just for the sake of their repair ability, which only repairs 50 hp, an amount not that big for the 622 max hp of the Chariots.
- Gryphon: A really weak unit. Its Solidarity bonus was maximum hp bonus, so they would most likely focus on surviveability of your troops, but they should have a more effective damage output. Definite con for such a useful bonus. What is more, they shouldn't have Normal damage, but Piercing.
- Chariot: They already have solidarity bonus, which should be more efficient than the Extra Defense skill, which is redundant anyway.
- Medi-Tech upgrade: I don't see why this upgrade has a time base of 1 second. I know the role of Mediocopters require a fast build up to heal units or drain mana out of enemies, but it should at least be 10 seconds.
- Pick up Guardsman: A guardsman on a flying unit with a ranged attack doesn't make sense. It should be combined with a Spearman instead, since the Solidarity bonus of attack speed would make the damage dealt more effective. Gryphons already have maximum hp bonus = surviveability, so, Parry doesn't look like the best combination.
- Disassemble: The unit types this ability can convert are not many, resulting a situational skill that isn't sufficient to support the role of an ultimate. Plus, the bonus returned is 45% and additional 21% from Solidarity bonus = 66%. In order to make it worthy of a skill, it should return >100% of the unit's original resource cost. Otherwise, I don't see why I should sacrifice a unit I might have recently trained.
- Mount Pegasus vs. Pick up Guardsmen: I don't see why the first one is permanent, while the second one is reversable. Both should be reversable. Plus, a combination of a Guardsman and a Gryphon results Parry and HP bonus together. Why Pegasus only offers Magic Resistance Bonus? Shouldn't it also have a combined Attack Speed, to ensure the maximum potential of Ricochet? Pegasus should have less speed, it's too fast.
- Propulsion Boost: I don't think it should target Mechanical too. Boosting mechanicals with extra attack rate, when there are units with solidarity bonuses, leads to a powerful buildings-destructive unit.
- Steam Bomber: Another transformation skill. While the other two (Pick up Guardsmen and Mount Pegasus) don't cost resources, this one does. Good for the fact that you achieve variety, but there's no variety already, with this amount of transformation skills.
- Collision: I don't see why would I spend resources to transform the Chariot and make it suicide for a single air counterpart that deals standard damage of 720. Useless ability for the role of this unit. I'd use it on Pegasus instead, who already has a more passive role than this one. Clearly, Steam Bomber is the tank against buildings, nothing more, nothing less. The solidarity bonus defines it that way, not me.
- Reassemble: Kind of contradicts with the whole recycling process. This skill doesn't support the said system at all. Great skill, I admit, but not for that kind of cost. As an ability, it should retain some neutral aspect and lessen the requirements from double cost to 50% of original cost. The unit returned should have lowered stats. That way, it would look balanced. A good alternative of the classic "Raise Dead" ability.
- Genius: This unit emits a solidarity bonus of "Increment", so, it wouldn't be able of standing alone in the fields. For this kind of role-absense, I'd switch its damage type to Normal or Piercing and make it a ground unit. You have created many flying ones already and the original Undead race can tear your troops apart quite easily with the presense of Crypt Fiends.
The gameplay was generally interesting and new to the classic approach of Warcraft 3 gameplay. Many features contributed for an altered face of default races. It also hosted many problems, so that would also bear many cons within, the ones I mentioned above.
7 / 10
b) Strategy
The features of Recycling, Solidarity and Trade Penalty offered lots of extra tactics as to how-to-handle the town itself and the troops, solidarity-wise. Quite a great strategy with all those bonuses, that let the player decide battle-specifics, up to the enemies they have to confront. The only problem was the lumber trading, which was manual.
8 / 10
c) Philosophy
Fine human race.
5 / 5
d) Appearance
Everything was fine.
5 / 5
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Total: 25 / 30
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9) Veljkom
Interesting aspects, but the early game could easily collapse.
a) Gameplay
- Skeleton Warriors: They should have greater damage, because they hardly could deal any. Although they are cheaper than a footman and gain the upgrade to boost their surviveability, they still needed more crowd control. An undead enemy with multiple carrions could bring my entire town down with the first assault. Dead Guardians were close to the damage output, yet they were created just by an ability.
- Burning/Ice Archers: They definitely shouldn't cost extra resources for transformation. It should just be an ability of permanent change. Apart from that, the food cost is 1, when normal archers' cost is 2.
Finally, the Ice archers should cost an equal amount of resources with Fire ones, because you are supposed to give the player an option out of two; if one costs more, it means that the resulting warrior (fire) is stronger than the ice one.
- Illusion Walk: This skill's learn tooltip is of Blademaster's. That tooltip says that it deals bonus damage, yet the actual skill doesn't do that. To be honest, it needed that kind of buff up, because the illusion itself isn't that powerful.
- Wraith: Evasion on a flying unit is rather risky for classic warcraft 3. Most units cannot attack flying units, which already limits gameplay cases. A good counterpart against the Storm Hammered Gryphon Riders with their AoE attack and the powerful Frost Wyrms, but still, evasion is too much. The only reason I'd approve of this is their concept, that perfectly binds with the concept of a ghost. Frost flash is not the perfect synergy with the evasion. Slowing down the attack speed is already enough to prevent damage in a fast rate.
- Sky Barges: Alternative workers, that surprised me of their potential. Really nice concept, damage should be as it is, so that's a balanced unit. An active army of those could debuff whole enemy troops, by slowing down their attack preparations. The Blight Obelisks are great in every situation. They can be combined with the Dead Guardians to heal their weak hp and aid everyone in the battlefields. The limiting option of 5 was a way to balance the spamming of those building types, but 5 for the whole race can either be good or bad. If you have created 5 structures of every possible type, additional Sky Barges are rather useless; they already lack damage. So, I would instead create an ability, based on Charge Gold and Lumber, that creates a building and the building would have a countdown timer (a certain duration), to flatten up a possible mess. Finally, the structures Sky Barges can build shouldn't have the ability to attack; they serve more like a ward, not an actual tower. Defense should also be decreased to 3.Fear Aura works for allies, not enemies, so you actually debuff your own units. You made a mistake here
- Raise Guardians: The cooldown is too high for the strength of this unit. You should decrease it to 45.
- Archlich: This hero was way weaker than Bone Ranger. His first skills (other than the ultimate) doesn't offer an effective back up of your troops. Plague Curse should definitely be replaced. You have one skill to sacrifice your units (in order to gain mana back) and one to heal them (?).
- Skeletal Marauder: They don't bear the ability you claim them to have in the tooltip (Spawn Skeletal Grunts), so the upgrade is redundant.
- Unholy Ward: This one shouldn't be autocast, since the auras don't stack with each other. The Skeletal Mage already has the Animate Dead ability, so, one would probably raise an animated unit, than a single ward, that boosts attack damage only by 10%.
- Backpack: It was a quite unnecessary upgrade. You have given the ability of carrying to many unit types. I would only give it to Sky Barge (for it makes a good mix with their role) and maybe the Skeletal Marauders.
- Necrolyte: Malediction shouldn't be there; the chance to miss is achieved by their evasion already. Didn't even cast this skill. Apart from that, Frost Flash does almost the same thing.
- Enhance: This ability, along with Fear Aura (of which you forgot to alter the Targets Allowed), couldn't be combined, causing the buff to disappear almost instantly.
Gameplay in general was moderate, fun-wise, there was not a huge variety of abilities to enthusiastically explore, most of them were debuffs and raise skeletons. This race stands out with a huge amount of corpses nearby, which is situational. It was a bit complicated, because each unit had its own role and identity, which was followed by many spells and abilities, so, that made it even harder to control every one of them. The heroes could be more.
I liked the role of Sky Barges, the Eternal Servitude (which by the way was contrary to the role of most units: raise skeletons), the Ice Prison skill, Damnation, the concept of the food-producing buildings to raise guardians and allow themselves to defend the town more effectively.
6.5 / 10
b) Strategy
Definitely not a simple race editing, this product was given thought. There were some strategy-supportive units, like Sky Barges, Spectres and Archers, who could be transformed into different skeletons and by extension aid in different situations. I could say strategy can have many variations.
7 / 10
c) Philosophy
The Wraiths were out of place, your race was skeleton-themed not Undead in general. Frost Flash and Ice Prison don't look like abilities of a skeleton.
4 / 5
d) Appearance
The models were fine, there were tooltips that were not changed (like Death Coil, of which the actual name was Death Coil Chain, Illusion Walk learn tooltip), tooltips that didn't do what they said, e.g. Shadow Fire that doesn't increase nearby units' damage. Sky Barges' structures were not obelisks, Tomb of Bones name didn't match the role of the building (items' seller). Finally, Frost Flash didn't have any frost visual effect.
2.5 / 5
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Total: 20 / 30
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10) Vermillion Edict
Inspiring divinity, but many flaws.
a) Gameplay
- Perenolde's Blessing: 25% extra hp regeneration is way too much for a single passive of a structure. I'd decrease it to 10%.
- Skullbreaker: I don't even know why a caster type unit has the Taunt ability. Its max health isn't enough to sustain 10 damage sources simultaneously. Entrhall does the same thing, but on a unit that can definitely support this kind of role. The Regenerate ability should be autocast, because lots of units have active abilities and it's hard to control them. Storm Surge is redundant, the damage it deals is minor.
- Size: The buildings' size was huge, although it was more realistic, it brought up several gameplay issues.
- Tavern: Since it's not a classic item shop and it also sells units as well hosts a couple of upgrades for them, it should require any unit around, not just heroes.
- Netherlord's Hammer: A weird ability. It spawns selectable orbs for the summoning player, but, you can't see where they are going. Their damage is also minor. They have two abilities, one of which requires mana to cast, but they don't even have maximum mana.
- Attack Dog: This unit is really weak for the abilities it has. It has Howl of Terror which makes it a first-line unit, but its hit points are not enough to effectively debuff the enemies, without dying. For a unit that is trained off a building that requires third tier, it is way too easy to confront.
- Noble: A tank unit with evasion is a powerful combination. Definitely not balanced. Their base armor is really high as well.
- Tower: Useless structure. There is already the Spire. Default Human race has a neutral tower that upgrades itself into offensive tower variations. This one serves only as a watch point, something that a classic ward would most likely do as well. The invisibility detection it bears is combined in the Guard Tower of default Humans, which can also attack enemies. I built one and I didn't care for being the target of the enemy waves. Desperation didn't work, it only left a visual attack power on the tower, but lacked the actual ability to attack.
- Arcanist: Two abilities that increase life regeneration on a single unit is too much. The first one debuffs the allies into boosting the regeneration of theirs, so, I would prefer spending 200 mana for an additionally AoE health regeneration, than debuffing my allies for 60 mana.
Arcane Arrows didn't even work for me.
- Gatherer: Gatherers have Call of Battle but the requirements are not right; whenever I tried to convert them, an error showed me that you didn't switch the requirements of structure and units from the original Human race.
- Heresy: It doesn't "massively" boost the stats of the hero, so it's a useless transformation.
- Siege Attack: Many units have Siege type of attack. Another imbalanced case. Their spellcasting role doesn't match with their attacking attribute.
- Atramancers: Their Atrum Exuro doesn't synergise with Netherlord's Hammer skill. You etherealise them and no spell follows as a damaging component.
- Ex-Bishop: His role is quite ambiguous. Although he is a tank, he has four abilities at his disposal, most of them being extremely weak. I hardly had the chance to cast them, because I had Ex-Bishops in the first line to sustain incoming damage, before the dps units do their destruction quest. Holy Fire is the same to Siege ability of the Fallen Knight's and it doesn't offer anything special to a simple unit, while they were equally powerful: 20 damage per orb.
Rend and Shockwave don't deal damage to the caster, as the tooltip states.
- Load and Repair: While some buildings had the Load ability, right clicking on half-destroyed structures was issuing the loading, not the repair.
- Tower of Domination: a) It's not even a tower. b) All heroes could be trained at the same time. c) I disliked the fact that you could train simple units within the altar-themed structure.
Gameplay was really complex. Buildings are hosting upgrades for units they do not train, other upgrades don't mention exactly what abilities they unlock (e.g. Training from Beastlord's Villa) and a complexity of this level doesn't make the game fun. There were definitely some facts I liked, but most likely, when the race has a wide variety of units with many life regeneration skills, units with many abilities that do not always (or at all) work, supposed tanks that share the role of a spellcaster as well, it gets hard to control several of them. A race with so many unit options should at least have maximum food increased. I didn't fancy the Tavern's role as well, which also sells units, just like Mercenary Camps do and the general gameplay was not clearly thought through (with some features completely unnoticed, e.g. the fact that towers don't attack, even when running the Desperation upgrade or the non-working Sanctify).
4 / 10
b) Strategy
The strategy is always dependent on the gameplay, so a complex gameplay leads the player to hardly anticipate and design their next tactic. On the first hand, you can create tank units with Arcanists to spam life regeneration abilities. On the other hand, you can spam several Atramancers to exterminate a decent amount of enemies and run them back to town, but this tactic requires mastery of controlling them and the ratio is 1:1, so, 1 Attramancer devours one enemy at a time and for a unit with that amount of damage, I'm not sure if it's the way to dominate an enemy's base. Still, a good strategy.
Other units' roles are most likely a placement to fill the structures' training slots. Their power is equal to creeps in Neutral camps and I don't see them as an outstanding source of power against several allies attacking your base.
5 / 10
c) Philosophy
Although the race's main aspect was divine power, it also hosted units out of concept, such as the Atramancer, who would refer to an Undead race, and the Skullbreaker (same as Atramancer). Apart from that and some icons that were out of Human concept, there's nothing wrong with it.
3.5 / 5
d) Appearance
Many DISBTN icons missing, some tooltips, e.g. Taunt didn't even explain why a Skullbreaker would be able of attracting nearby units into attacking him. Farmstead and Tower of Domination didn't look that human. The heroes' models were smaller than the normal units and they didn't even have the hero's glow, to indicate their class. Finally, Atramancers are supposed to transmute some of the Tavern's items, yet you don't mention which items and what this transmution procedure actually is, when they are single units that cannot use inventory items.
3.5 / 5
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Total: 16 / 30
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11) JokeMaster
Harmonic and simple.
a) Gameplay
- Upgrades: Defend upgrade didn't enable the Defense ability. Archon didn't require the upgrades to cast the abilities, you forgot to add the upgrade requirement in them. Cleric Training is given twice in the Temple of Quel'Dorei. Cleric Master training is not removed, if I upgrade the clerics to Arch ones.
- Lumber: I liked the idea that lumber-specific harvesters are trained through the lumber drop-off point, but the lumber gathering is delayed too much. You should at least have 1 lumber spirit on start.
- Templar, Arcane Guardian: For Templar, 4 food cost is much, would reduce it to 3. For Arcane Guardian, 5 food is too much, would reduce it to 4 or 3, considering that it is not that powerful as a unit.
- Resurrection: You are giving a simple unit too much authority. You could make the healing wave autocast for better player control and resurrection amount of raised units down to 2.
- Resource costs: The structures in particular cost low amount of resources and it's too pretentious. For an upgare of improved harvesting, you should tone it up a bit.
- Illusionist (Illusion): This ability had no mana cost. Just because the illusions don't deal any damage, it doesn't mean that it shouldn't cost mana; illusions have a purpose: confusion, and that sounds enough to have a mana cost for.
- Mage Huntress: Her role reminds me of DotA's Magina and I frankly believe this is the map she belongs to; for a ladder game? Hm, don't think so. It requires great focus on the hero.
- Ballista: I couldn't train it, because their requirement was that of the Night Elves.
- Eagle: I would switch the damage type to Piercing. There is no excuse of using such type (Magic) in third-tier units.
- Ranger / Archer and Eagles: If you upgrade to Rangers (which is a normal situation), you are no longer able of training archers and by extension riding eagles. You could at least pick Rangers and result less damage, so as to assimilate with the Archers', but increase the speed (or maybe leave the Hide ability to have an invisible army of flying units, that would be interesting!).
- Arcane Guardian: For such a high training time, they should have an hp and damage increase.
Not many flaws in the race, but I can't say I discovered some extravagant gameplay. It's ol' classic Warcraft, I expected more at this part. The balance was fine, I admit. You needed to spice it up a bit, you have had some seriously inspiring background, but the roles of the units were very familiar with what I know.
5 / 10
b) Strategy
Again, nothing innovative, train units to march on the enemy bases. It did remind of simple race editing in most parts. You had one kind of each unit role, dps, primary tank, late-game tank and ballista, which doesn't offer various tactics to follow. The only variation in strategy is the Eagle/Archer marriage, which cannot be used, if I upgrade to Ranger and as a concept, it is already known from the Night Elves. I didn't see any personal flare in the race.
4 / 10
c) Philosophy
I am not sure whether Archons and Arcane Guardians belong to the whole race's philosophy; just because they were summoned by some great magi, it doesn't mean that they are having an actual part in the race itself. Even if they were supposedly summoned, why the town should be able of controlling them? Other than that, the race is perfect concept-wise.
4 / 5
d) Appearance
Good choice of buildings, but your town hall's model was bugged. Dying units left staves on the ground and the town hall's bugged vertices were attached on them. You should consider working more on tooltips, because some of them remained unchanged or had some spelling errors.
3.5 / 5
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Total: 16.5 / 30
At first glance, your race felt really familiar. At second glance, I realised why; not only your race shares most of the models the original Orcs have, but it also reflects a combination of the standard Warcraft 3 races. The goldmine concept refers to Night Elves, the lumber-unique harvesters refer to Undeads, the Spirit Wyverns' functionality refers to Human Dragonhawks. It may seemingly look the best recipe to make a race perfect from every aspect, but at the same time, it inholds certain risks and gameplay mistakes.
Let's break things down:
a) Gameplay
The problem here is that you didn't risk to practically augment your race with extra features and you preferred a safe place, that is almost a replica of the standard Warcraft 3 gameplay. This means that, if I have to judge how fun playing with your race is, I'd be judging the standard Warcraft 3.
- Orc Banners: Really nice addition and I specifically like the fact that the upgrade is applied on the heroes. What I'd avoid is adding the ability by default. I would instead use coding, that, when the upgrade was researched, everytime a hero finished reviving/ being trained, I'd add the ability on them. The reason why I suggest this is that the main focus early game is the hero and a couple of warriors to farm some low level creep camps. Since the life regeneration rate of 0.5% is pretty low, this upgrade's potential would show up the earliest possible. So, this innocent upgrade that holds a whole slot of abilities in the heroes' interface cries out to be researched and by the time the player would proceed with the research, they would have to wait for 45 seconds, before going on with the peons' training. My point is, upgrades mainly become focus of players, and, because in this case two skills are better than one, it's pretty not required.
What is more, the speed bonus is pretty redundant. If you are using an AoE ability, why would you want to boost the speed of your troops, which would cause them to flee faster from the source of healing? It just doesn't make sense. Although it's set by default, I'd definitely not advertise the fact that it also hastens your units.
Finally, I'd make the Orc Banners race-specific, to boost the concept of the race, meaning that I'd prefer the targets allowed to be Player Units, instead of allied units, so that the healing was established among your own units only.
Pros: Extra life regeneration is always good.
Cons: - Research time should be set to 25-30.
- Low AoE, compared to the healing done. Definitely would increase it up to 1200 with such a minor healing.
- If not for the AoE, the healing done should be increased for effectiveness, it's a hero ability anyway.
- Baticist: Definitely a cute unit, that switches from ground to flying one. This feature holds tactics, one I can think of right now is an easier battle against the Undeads, that use swarms of Crypt Fiends to bring any flying unit down. For that, I can give you credit, but there are some problems. The ground unit has a fixed amount of damage, which becomes stronger when flying, as it becomes two-dimensional.
The abilities remain the same, so, give me a reason apart from having Undead enemies why a player would not make the Baticists fly. The only difference is that the ground unit can't attack flying units. I personally found no reason why I wouldn't convert my troops into flying ones.What I'd change: Boost the damage of the Baticists in ground form (and by extension, change the damage type to "Normal"), low attack speed and add the Pillage ability on them. In the flying form, the damage would become lowered compared to the ground form's with damage type Piercing and removal of the Pillage ability.This way, each option generates different strategies: ground units have pillage ability, decent damage, slower attack rate, but can't attack air units. Air units can attack air and land units with higher attack speed, but they don't have pillage. At any time, a player could then switch them to the most preferable state.
- Goldmine: Although you wanted to combine race specifics into one race, you forgot some detail, which is proved to be of great importance. The peons are actually loaded in the gold mine and the Burrows have the Battle Stations ability, which calls peons to render it an attacking structure. The fact that the peons are loaded though, makes the following error come up: "No peons could be found.". This would make the player unload peons from the goldmine, until they are loaded into the burrows, when the player would have more important things to do, when defending the town or they would have some extra peons trained for defending circumstances, which is practically a waste of gold and food limit.
- Magus: Pretty much the Orc Shaman. What I definitely disliked is the Blizzard ability. Units that have auto-activation abilities most likely depend on them to identify their role in the battle. A unit though that has a serious buff (Bloodlust) and at the same time has a channeling ability (Blizzard) that it prevents it from buffing the troops, while the effect lasts, is pretty annoying. My point is, if no one uses it, then why bother adding it in the first place? They have a quite ambiguous role. What is more, Blizzard ability doesn't seem to conceptually fit the race.
- Monument of Storms: Although it reminded me of the Night Elven buildings that become true fighters when they are unrooted, I still loved the idea. What I think you should change is that the Avatar of Storm, in the "humanoid" form, should still bear the ability to perform the researching of the Thunder Burst upgrade, because, if I don't research it in the first place, I will have to build another Monument of Storms, upgrade it, and then transform it to Avatar of Storms. While upgrading, the Avatar of Storms should stay still. That's an idea actually.
I would also want to see something more with the monument of storms, since it objectively provides nothing as a building. Maybe some higher income rate, maybe some faster reviving of the heroes? But, when transforming into Avatar of Storms, the bonus ends as well. The construction time should definitely be lowered down and when I am supposed to transform into the Avatar of Storms, it should not cost food (because a) it's mechanical, and b) the Night Elven buildings don't cost food to uproot and become mobile units).I would also want to see a different type of damage, since this is a late game unit and by that stage, most races have some sort of invulnerability to magic with one way or another.
I applaud you for the fact that you left the unit mechanical in the Avatar form.
- Drummer: A 70% on both attack speed and speed sounds like a total maim of the affected units. With a duration of 10 seconds and a cooldown of 35 (which equals to a reuse of 25 seconds), this is too much. I'd increase the cooldown to 50 seconds or lower the debuff's power.
- Spirit Wyvern: If the Spirit Flight is cast over trees, the wyvern cannot move until the effect ends. Apart from that, I like how the Aerial Shackles don't break, even when casting Spirit Flight, so that's a great addition.
- Earthen Curse: Should not target heroes, because it makes them all have 415 hp, ignoring stats and items carried.
- War Stations: Holy ...! Very nice feature. Since they require a maximum of 2 grunts to actually perform a task, other than moving, their food cost of 3 along with the 3 + 3 of both grunts results 9 food cost, which is a really high number for a single entity of units. Still, the attack rate bonus is what made it my favourite unit of your race!
- Onslaught Aura vs. Rage: They basically offer the same bonuses. I'd definitely make Onslaught Aura an aura that would engulf nearby units in flames (allied), that cause burn damage upon attacking. It would also fit pretty great with Baticists, resulting a deadly army.
I am not impressed with the gameplay. It doesn't introduce new ways of playing, I played it like any other standard Warcraft III race, spam troops, while upgrading for the ultimate possible power. The most annoying feature was the forgotten Battle Stations ability that brings up an error, when all peons are already loaded, on the edge of the urge need to defend your town. Complicated? Not at all, simply because it most likely reflects the classic gameplay.
6 / 10
Explanation for the positive part of the grade:
- I liked the Orc Banners (would want them more powerful though).
- I liked the Monument of Storms idea.
- I found Baticists pretty great.
- The Liquid Flame item was rather interesting. With the stuns of Gladiator, this item is a must on that hero.
- I really liked the Grunts being able of entering War Stations, resulting a high-level war machine.
b) Strategy
I can only think of one, that allows a player to adapt themselves against specific races, such as Undeads, by avoiding the use of "Fly" ability on Baticists. It definitely isn't a simple race editing and I will list all the new features:
- Earthen Curse ability
- Heroes sharing an upgrade
- Buildings sharing an upgrade (Thunder Burst)
- War Stations that accept Grunts to activate their functionality in the most potential manner
- Rest ability
- Liquid Flame
But I have to admit, most features origin from the original Orc race, along with the stats of the units, which is a clear copy paste, and that is why I will give it a
5.5 / 10
c) Philosophy
It does follow the philosophy of the original race in an improved manner whatsoever.
However, the Blizzard ability is out of place, so that will cost you 0.1. Not that much.
4.9/5
d) Appearance
It's not reeeeally different from the original one, so I can't say if it indeed looks better, but I know it doesn't look worse. The Avatars of Storms give a nice effect and they look very powerful and outstanding in territory wars. Along with the Baticists and the Spirit Wyverns to brim the skies with their presence, the Gladiator to lead the troops with his mighty weapon and shivering size, a definite scene of war, that bears the passion of a warlike tribe.
5 / 5
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Total: 21.4 / 30
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Let's break things down:
a) Gameplay
The problem here is that you didn't risk to practically augment your race with extra features and you preferred a safe place, that is almost a replica of the standard Warcraft 3 gameplay. This means that, if I have to judge how fun playing with your race is, I'd be judging the standard Warcraft 3.
- Orc Banners: Really nice addition and I specifically like the fact that the upgrade is applied on the heroes. What I'd avoid is adding the ability by default. I would instead use coding, that, when the upgrade was researched, everytime a hero finished reviving/ being trained, I'd add the ability on them. The reason why I suggest this is that the main focus early game is the hero and a couple of warriors to farm some low level creep camps. Since the life regeneration rate of 0.5% is pretty low, this upgrade's potential would show up the earliest possible. So, this innocent upgrade that holds a whole slot of abilities in the heroes' interface cries out to be researched and by the time the player would proceed with the research, they would have to wait for 45 seconds, before going on with the peons' training. My point is, upgrades mainly become focus of players, and, because in this case two skills are better than one, it's pretty not required.
What is more, the speed bonus is pretty redundant. If you are using an AoE ability, why would you want to boost the speed of your troops, which would cause them to flee faster from the source of healing? It just doesn't make sense. Although it's set by default, I'd definitely not advertise the fact that it also hastens your units.
Finally, I'd make the Orc Banners race-specific, to boost the concept of the race, meaning that I'd prefer the targets allowed to be Player Units, instead of allied units, so that the healing was established among your own units only.
Pros: Extra life regeneration is always good.
Cons: - Research time should be set to 25-30.
- Low AoE, compared to the healing done. Definitely would increase it up to 1200 with such a minor healing.
- If not for the AoE, the healing done should be increased for effectiveness, it's a hero ability anyway.
- Baticist: Definitely a cute unit, that switches from ground to flying one. This feature holds tactics, one I can think of right now is an easier battle against the Undeads, that use swarms of Crypt Fiends to bring any flying unit down. For that, I can give you credit, but there are some problems. The ground unit has a fixed amount of damage, which becomes stronger when flying, as it becomes two-dimensional.
The abilities remain the same, so, give me a reason apart from having Undead enemies why a player would not make the Baticists fly. The only difference is that the ground unit can't attack flying units. I personally found no reason why I wouldn't convert my troops into flying ones.What I'd change: Boost the damage of the Baticists in ground form (and by extension, change the damage type to "Normal"), low attack speed and add the Pillage ability on them. In the flying form, the damage would become lowered compared to the ground form's with damage type Piercing and removal of the Pillage ability.This way, each option generates different strategies: ground units have pillage ability, decent damage, slower attack rate, but can't attack air units. Air units can attack air and land units with higher attack speed, but they don't have pillage. At any time, a player could then switch them to the most preferable state.
- Goldmine: Although you wanted to combine race specifics into one race, you forgot some detail, which is proved to be of great importance. The peons are actually loaded in the gold mine and the Burrows have the Battle Stations ability, which calls peons to render it an attacking structure. The fact that the peons are loaded though, makes the following error come up: "No peons could be found.". This would make the player unload peons from the goldmine, until they are loaded into the burrows, when the player would have more important things to do, when defending the town or they would have some extra peons trained for defending circumstances, which is practically a waste of gold and food limit.
- Magus: Pretty much the Orc Shaman. What I definitely disliked is the Blizzard ability. Units that have auto-activation abilities most likely depend on them to identify their role in the battle. A unit though that has a serious buff (Bloodlust) and at the same time has a channeling ability (Blizzard) that it prevents it from buffing the troops, while the effect lasts, is pretty annoying. My point is, if no one uses it, then why bother adding it in the first place? They have a quite ambiguous role. What is more, Blizzard ability doesn't seem to conceptually fit the race.
- Monument of Storms: Although it reminded me of the Night Elven buildings that become true fighters when they are unrooted, I still loved the idea. What I think you should change is that the Avatar of Storm, in the "humanoid" form, should still bear the ability to perform the researching of the Thunder Burst upgrade, because, if I don't research it in the first place, I will have to build another Monument of Storms, upgrade it, and then transform it to Avatar of Storms. While upgrading, the Avatar of Storms should stay still. That's an idea actually.
I would also want to see something more with the monument of storms, since it objectively provides nothing as a building. Maybe some higher income rate, maybe some faster reviving of the heroes? But, when transforming into Avatar of Storms, the bonus ends as well. The construction time should definitely be lowered down and when I am supposed to transform into the Avatar of Storms, it should not cost food (because a) it's mechanical, and b) the Night Elven buildings don't cost food to uproot and become mobile units).I would also want to see a different type of damage, since this is a late game unit and by that stage, most races have some sort of invulnerability to magic with one way or another.
I applaud you for the fact that you left the unit mechanical in the Avatar form.
- Drummer: A 70% on both attack speed and speed sounds like a total maim of the affected units. With a duration of 10 seconds and a cooldown of 35 (which equals to a reuse of 25 seconds), this is too much. I'd increase the cooldown to 50 seconds or lower the debuff's power.
- Spirit Wyvern: If the Spirit Flight is cast over trees, the wyvern cannot move until the effect ends. Apart from that, I like how the Aerial Shackles don't break, even when casting Spirit Flight, so that's a great addition.
- Earthen Curse: Should not target heroes, because it makes them all have 415 hp, ignoring stats and items carried.
- War Stations: Holy ...! Very nice feature. Since they require a maximum of 2 grunts to actually perform a task, other than moving, their food cost of 3 along with the 3 + 3 of both grunts results 9 food cost, which is a really high number for a single entity of units. Still, the attack rate bonus is what made it my favourite unit of your race!
- Onslaught Aura vs. Rage: They basically offer the same bonuses. I'd definitely make Onslaught Aura an aura that would engulf nearby units in flames (allied), that cause burn damage upon attacking. It would also fit pretty great with Baticists, resulting a deadly army.
I am not impressed with the gameplay. It doesn't introduce new ways of playing, I played it like any other standard Warcraft III race, spam troops, while upgrading for the ultimate possible power. The most annoying feature was the forgotten Battle Stations ability that brings up an error, when all peons are already loaded, on the edge of the urge need to defend your town. Complicated? Not at all, simply because it most likely reflects the classic gameplay.
6 / 10
Explanation for the positive part of the grade:
- I liked the Orc Banners (would want them more powerful though).
- I liked the Monument of Storms idea.
- I found Baticists pretty great.
- The Liquid Flame item was rather interesting. With the stuns of Gladiator, this item is a must on that hero.
- I really liked the Grunts being able of entering War Stations, resulting a high-level war machine.
b) Strategy
I can only think of one, that allows a player to adapt themselves against specific races, such as Undeads, by avoiding the use of "Fly" ability on Baticists. It definitely isn't a simple race editing and I will list all the new features:
- Earthen Curse ability
- Heroes sharing an upgrade
- Buildings sharing an upgrade (Thunder Burst)
- War Stations that accept Grunts to activate their functionality in the most potential manner
- Rest ability
- Liquid Flame
But I have to admit, most features origin from the original Orc race, along with the stats of the units, which is a clear copy paste, and that is why I will give it a
5.5 / 10
c) Philosophy
It does follow the philosophy of the original race in an improved manner whatsoever.
However, the Blizzard ability is out of place, so that will cost you 0.1. Not that much.
4.9/5
d) Appearance
It's not reeeeally different from the original one, so I can't say if it indeed looks better, but I know it doesn't look worse. The Avatars of Storms give a nice effect and they look very powerful and outstanding in territory wars. Along with the Baticists and the Spirit Wyverns to brim the skies with their presence, the Gladiator to lead the troops with his mighty weapon and shivering size, a definite scene of war, that bears the passion of a warlike tribe.
5 / 5
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Total: 21.4 / 30
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2) FuzzyFury
A pretty balanced race, with some handy features, but also a bearer of wrong calculations.
a) Gameplay
The race seems to focus a lot on surviveability, when the stats should concern you more.
- Tombs: They have an auto-active ability that replenishes hp. The concept is similar to the Replenish Mana and Life from the Night Elves, but that one is way more powerful, since it also restores mana. Their size is kind of big, making them look like barracks, which is sort of confusing.
- Forsaken Guard Tower: Organising your first and only defense after the first townhall upgrade is pretty lame, because you limit the gameplay options of a player, forcing them to build up their defense mid- or late-game. Early game is excluded. The unit is a copy paste of the original Guard Tower, but setting the gold cost up to 120 achieves a good balance.
- Forsaken Barracks: Primary troop production center, which actually trains Forsaken Ghouls of minor role. Here comes the balance issue I previously mentioned. On the first hand, the Forsaken Ghoul is cheap in gold and food cost and fast in training event; on the other hand, it constitutes a pretentious warrior. With a maximum health of 150 and the lowest damage of all units in the race, it is downgraded compared to the summoned skeletons of Val'kyrs. So, when summoned units have no food and gold cost, they are still more powerful than this unit.
I honestly wouldn't bother creating masses of these Ghouls to aid my allies against enemy bases early game. I speak of early game, because the Forsaken Guard Towers leave no space for defensive build-up, so it would most likely turn into an offensive case.
Furthermore, when Tombs heal nearby units, Mordo, the Undertaker and Sylvanas Windrunner, the Banshee Queen contribute in that as well, I wouldn't spend mana in healing such units.
- Val'kyr: Another pretentious unit or a wanna-be warrior. The damage is insanely low, considering the fact that she spawns one skeleton at a time and her health is so low. The invisibility spell is out of place and I have two reasons for that:
1) She will be spending so much mana on the corpse summoning, that the invisibility skill will totally not pay off. The only way to avoid this issue is to buff up the whole troops with the Forsaken Banshee, by using Anti-magic shield, but seriously, I doubt anyone would bother doing that.
2) Although I know Humans have it too, I find it unsuitable for one of your units to make another unit invisible and the Apothecary to remove buffs from friendly units too. I would definitely trigger a custom ability to only dispel negative buffs, simply because it's another strategy-pooper.
- Blight Spreader: A decent way to train units, by making them look like buildings, I like that. What I would change is where the upgrade can be researched from. I'd add it in the Forsaken Blacksmith, simply because enabling the construction/training of a unit within a structure that doesn't train it, doesn't make sense.
- Death Guards: They look like they have the role of the Mountain Giants, but, at least those ones literally have greater defensive capabilities and ways to improve their damage output. So, the Death Guards are warriors that take raw damage and by extension they look like kamikaze.
- Tomb of Relics: Moonstone shouldn't be there. You are not using night-specific abilities, neither your units regenerate during night.
The gameplay is rather weak, compared to what you were supposed to do, judging from the fact that 10/30 points derive from the "Gameplay" criterium.
3.5 / 10
b) Strategy
The race offers various strategies troops-wise. A game is divided into two ways of playing: Offensive and Defensive. The fact that the first upgrade is the introduction to defensive style of playing, is a factor that already dooms a variety of options. This is a definite con.
What I can make out though is the fact that there are several units to choose from and play accordingly. You have two tanks, the Forsaken Abomination and the Death Guard. Against undeads, you would probably play with Death Guards, because they have greater health and they are not dependent on Cannibalize for surviveability, since Undeads would exterminate any corpse with their necromancers.
The bad thing though is that it shares so many abilities from the Undead race, that they look like twins. I can barely notice any difference, except for the Flaming Breath, which frankly looks out of place (concept-wise). This means that the race is in fact a simple race editing (proof, no triggers).
I keep in mind that the race looks like a copy-paste of its original one (Banshees and Gargoyles are nothing more but a transfer), the fact that that you didn't add any extra features that overstrip the common Warcraft 3 tactical events.
4.3 / 10
c) Philosophy
There were some flaws with it, but I will mention them in the Appearance criterium. Other than that, I of course felt I played with the Undead race (mostly because you used many things from it).
4 / 5 (for overusing the original race)
d) Appearance
The appearance flaws:
- Flaming Breath on an Undead unit with an energy-type concept (and not the one of the Burning Legion) is not in-concept.
- Invisibility, I'd rather you called it differently.
- Moonstone, out of concept (gameplay-wise as well)
- Forsaken Guard Tower and Fortress are Human, not Undead. Most structures have skulls on them and other gruesome effects.
- The laborers' animations are played even after the first summoning of the buildings, which makes it confusing.
- The units you borrowed from the Undead race are renamed into "Forsaken xxx". A flag to my eyes to show me which ones you didn't change.
3.2 / 5
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Total: 15 / 30
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3) Narogog
Really unique race, great feeling, many coding and imbalanced stuff.
a) Gameplay
So many to say, don't know where to begin from.
- Trained units: I noticed that several towers train same unit-types, e.g. Adept can be trained in both Citadel of the Higher Arts and Magi Tower.
- Gate way: It can be pointed towards any point, which is overpowered. You can basically bend the timespace to outrun tracts of forests. This can be suicidal as well, because you can be heading towards a fully defensive town or let the enemies enter your town. A building that can target any point on the map except for the classic Revealing action seems to be either overpowered or something you didn't think quite well.
- Tower abilities: Almost my point for the "Gate way". The mass banishing and the Elemental Storm afterwards seems to be the most powerful combination to tear your enemy's base apart. I know it's appealing to play it safe and destroy from distance, but how would you react, if you had such an enemy to face?
I don't even want to mention the superb amounts of damage, which is enough to bring the whole enemy town health level to 50%. Most of them, which are periodic, should stop when ordering the tower to "Stop", you should make them channeling.
- Arcane Ship: Excellent concept, I really love it, but, a transport ship that is able of attacking, casting Cloud and replenish nearby units' mana is a mix of hardcore power. For its concept, I'd only leave the role of the transporting unit and maybe the cloud, so that it has a synergy with the fact that it will unload units from within. The rest stuff don't fit.
- Mage and Adept: They have the same model; way too confusing for a race with so many units.
- Void Scout: Void Bolt deals great damage and for an early game, where you can actually train this unit, it's a lot of damage to face. Damage increased from Mage to Void Scout is simply fake; the Void can't attack being ethereal, it only casts parasite.
- Siege Breaker: Rain of Fire's duration is too much. No unit will be staying within radius for 60 waves of burning damage. Quake's duration is always too high, considering that a single unit can do this. Although the damage is lower than the Earthquake of the Far Seer, the duration is double.
- Summon Building: Really nice ability, but doesn't seem to work.
- Aura of Mastery: It's good that you balance its power, by damaging the tower itself, but sometimes it stacks, making endless damage to itself.
- Shield Battle Training: I might be wrong, but it doesn't seem to work.
- Illusionist: You definitely forgot to add cooldown on this. With a mana cost of 100 and a maximum mana of 400 and several mana replenishing sources, such as Tower of Mastery, Mana Nodes and Arcane Ships, this is the deadliest mage. It can continuously spawn illusions without any break point, that can lag and bug the graphics of the game.
- Protection: Another really nice ability and well balanced; you should increase the damage dealth though. It also conflicts with the channeling mages.
- Fire Trap: A defensive (offensive, I'd say) building with really low hit points, it needs some nerf up.
- Summoning Ritual: It performs the same operation to Gate Way. Was it really necessary as an ultimate? Why having two of them?
- Spread Corruption: The damage bonus is a great boost, but the armor reduction is a pain, especially for units with so many channeling abilities. However, I admit that Banish ability balances it up. Cast Spread Corruption on yourself and then Banish yourself, to avoid physical damage (which by extension makes the -12 armor pretty worthless).
- Dirt to Gold: You actually boost the gold output of every gold mine, be it yours or an ally's or an enemy's or a neutral one. Why would a single unit have that kind of power? I think it's overpowered to take over the control of every gold mine on the map.
There are many more to note. Although I like the idea, I'm afraid it gets too complicated, because each unit has a variety of abilities that fit a hero instead and the options to create an army are vast. It definitely introduces a new way of playing, since it has almost nothing to do with classic warcraft 3 gameplay. It brings forth new forces at your disposal and most of them have a unique role, no matter if they share the ultimate aim: powerful casters corrupting everything they touch.
So,
Pros: New ways of playing
Cons: You were so absorbed of creating a bunch of stuff, that you forgot to balance them.
They are a bunch of stuff that makes the war scene kind of unclear.
For that, I will give it a
6.5 / 10
b) Strategy
I already mentioned that the variety of spells and spellcasters adhere the goal of any player: win the game. It's not only the numbers that make the abilities powerful (which, as I previously said, should be definitely fixed), it's their nature as well. Massive illusions (an example) of your ally units is a definite yes for an offensive tactic.
Channeling mages can also stay in the defensive line, while having tanks, such as Battle Golems take the primary damage in the front line. There are buffers, debuffers, damage dealers, support units, you can pretty much find everything in this race.
Although Strategy is dependent on Gameplay and a complicated Gameplay leads to an unclear strategy, I still have to approve of this variety of units, tossed into a unique game style.
8 / 10
c) Philosophy
Transformation into Void Walkers seems a bit out of place.
4 / 5
d) Appearance
One thing I found frustrating was the tooltips. They really needed some extra work. Your mage and adept unit share the same model, resulting confusion. Some of the units also share same icons, which is a mistake unforgivable in official gaming (among the race itself, not various races sharing same icons).
2.5 / 5
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Total: 21 / 30
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4) 67Chrome
A great looking race, but I shouldn't be carried away by that. Although the abilities look perfect, they are too perfect and that's a reason why this race is unbeatable. Let's move on to the actual case:
a) Gameplay
The gameplay doesn't introduce anything innovative, the race lacks standard buildings compared to the original Warcraft 3's style, but that's not the issue; the issue is that I can pretty much empower my army with the "legendary" warriors early in game. Another issue is not the stats themselves, it's the abilities that bring pain to any unit that happens to be their target. Most of them are original, but they are heavily based on periodic attacks, which leaves no space for leaving the battle, since the maximum potential derives from directly facing the enemies.
Another thing I noticed is that all of them are either passive or autocast, building up a path to an easy flow of the game.
- Structures: Really low amount and although you were not supposed to copy and paste the original Warcraft's racial structures count, they still lack a lot in number. Two reasons why they make the gameplay too easy: The player is not burdened with creating multiple structures to boost the damage of the troops, so that leaves space for resources and time and at the same time the base is really small, compared to a third-tier race. Finally, you depend on the building queue too much to build your army, since every possible warrior unit is trained through a single structure-type.
- Nether Focus: In my opinion, the damage each of these are causing is enough, so, Mana replenishment doesn't make sense here. You turned the concept of a single food production construction into a polymorphic role. A structure that damages, replenishes mana of nearby units and provides food at the same time with such a low resource cost is the result of wrong calculations. I would make the damage a toggle ability, which, while it is on, the structures may receive 20% extra damage. It's also the way Warcraft 3 is coded, that made the enemy waves flee before the Nether Focus's damage.
- Return Resources: The invisibility skill also works for building structures. I would only keep it to that, removing the ability to become invisible when returning the resources, because invisible workers doesn't make great sense in the first place. I've also notices that Training Grounds can work as a lumber drop-off point. Again not much sense, especially when the resulting size of a single Illidari town is really small.
- Lack of Tiers: Tiers are not only a gameplay material, that unlocks certain unit types, but they also add a concept that the town passes from era to era. This feeling is missing from this race. The gameplay is very static already, with a few buildings to decorate the town. What is more, tiers would define the count of heroes possible to be trained.
- Upgrade buildings: Halls of Anguish and Tempest Sanctuary have the same role. If you really needed two structures for that, then you either were out of ideas or you added many upgrades. To my eyes, you added extra, unnecessary upgrades.
- Illidari Astromancers: For some reason, some of them used to have negative regeneration, causing them to constantly use their Nova ability. I also don't see why they are flying units; although I loved their whole concept, I wouldn't make them flying, they are not that powerful for this role. Their damaging nature kind of contradicts with their healing role, another case you should refine.
- Coilskar Predator: Their damage is insanely low and you probably thought that since each attack summons a water elemental, you get an equation of balance. I'm afraid I don't find it balanced at all. A new unit for each attack (which also applies on Attack Ground as well) is way too much. I don't even know why this unit has AoE attack, when it has such a low damage output.
- Illidari Siegebreaker: The way you triggered the skill (circular area damage), causes them to attack allied units as well. You already have enough of units with Attack Ground ability, so, I'd definitely not add this kind of an AoE here. Distance difference as bonus damage is already fine.
- Durance: This skill also attacks buildings and it already has a high duration. I'd leave it only able of attacking normal units and the ones trapped within, not units out of the circle.
- Bonechewer Brute: This unit was rather weak and I would hardly buy a lot of, to boost my army's battle capabilities. It was redundant, nor I would bother using it debuff against the enemies. Most units have passives already and the active here seems to be rather boring to use.
- Solarous: The damage prevention is a lot, considering that most ladder spells deal low damage. Its duration is also too high. I'd decrease damage prevention down to 150 and duration to 45 seconds. It's a single unit that only wastes 75 out of 400 mana to cast it.
Generally, the gameplay was fun, I have to say. It was the special effects and the nature of each ability that made it feel like that. Of course, since most of abilities were passive, you cannot discover the potential of each in practice (e.g. distance based damage - Siegebreakers) and the active ones were anything but fun. The race didn't introduce anything new, while basic stuff was missing from the race, leaving a feeling of absense in most parts.
6 / 10
b) Strategy
Strategy on the other hand was even better than the gameplay. Each unit has had serious tactics to follow, since they had been gradually stabilizing the maximum potency of their skills, leading to innovative strategies, that classic Warcraft 3 doesn't have, while the units serve for raw damage or raw buffing/debuffing. I can think of a hundred of battle tactics with these unit-types.
8 / 10
c) Philosophy
No problems here,
5 / 5
d) Appearance
Well, in my humble opinion, the best looking race.
5 / 5
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Total: 24 / 30
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5) Sage Chow
A really nice race with various aspects a player would like to try. Carefully designed and a bunch of ideas to craft a decent result.
a) Gameplay
I have to say, techtree-wise, there was nothing new, buildings and/or upgrades unlocking the more powerful elements of the race.
The flow of the game was not quite new, but it definitely had intriguing features.
The features that stand out are the day-/nightlight and the sun/rain events. Each of them offers eligible bonuses, calling the player to program themselves into playing accordingly.
- Venolia/Pyrolia Seeds: Apparently, as destructables, Nymphs could target them and gather lumber from them, which looked a little weird.
- Spirit Link: Although the Nymph can revert the action and let the seed return to its original state, when nymph leaves the plant, that plant is destroyed. It shouldn't be, obviously. What is more, the plants themselves are quite weak for a static warrior, so, their awakekening via nymphs was not the best option. In most cases, these plants die when they engage themselves in battle, so, that's a waste of a Nymph.
- Seed: Useless sub-function, that creates a seed on death. Unless you have Autumn Druid, the Nymph is already dead, so you would need an additional Nymph to raise the recently created plant.
- Track: This skill also tracks dead units, which is confusing.
- Spore: I don't think it should be targetting allies. The race is supposed to be immune to certain natural affections.
- Turtle Spirit: These units cannot attack buildings, which is a huge question as to how supportive they can be in an enemy's base.
- Healing Sun: Shouldn't this skill turn night into day? Otherwise, its concept is not defined. Plus, it was available from level 4, not the standard 6.
- Water Reservoir: On a map that doesn't have water areas, the skill is useless. I couldn't successfully test it.
- Sun Worship: This upgrade shouldn't be hosted within Temple. For its generic enhancing effect, I'd use Sylvan Armory.
- Hardened Skin (Turtle Spirit): I don't think the extra 150 hp was necessary. The unit is not a tank, otherwise you should use "Normal" attack type and it already has a damage return and a Hardened Skin, with a preset hp pool of 950.
- Sentry Tower: The upgrade time was rather fast. It should be around 20, since maximum food is not affected.
- Repetetive abilities: I was anything but glad to see that some abilities were used on different unit-types, e.g. Mountain Druid's Four Seasons ability: Spring summon has the same ability to Druid's.
- Four Seasons: The summons possess static abilities, so Lunar Chant is available at daylight as well. I think it should be changed to follow the theme of the race much better.
Great features, that made the game flow quite impressive. I can't say it was fun though, because I kept on focusing on what weather to create, up to my units' output and what time of the day I should be origanising my assaults. It was complex in the part, where I couldn't determine whether each passive ability (Chlorophyll, etc.) would be the appropriate one for each respective unit. Stats-wise, the mana pools were big. You've managed to get a basic concept of time-spells (night-day) the Night Elves have and extend it to some greater concept. I have to admit though, the day cycles to night and back forth, resulting a race that doesn't always express its full potential.
6 / 10
b) Strategy
I basically think that Strategy is the identity of this race. You are making your move, up to the time of day and you select the respective unit-types to fight with. Each unit type had a variety of abilities and their passive ones, race-defined (e.g. Chlorophyll), raised several tactics.
9 / 10
c) Philosophy
Excellent.
5 / 5
d) Appearance
Some minor tooltip changes would be good (Spelling errors). You should also enhance the tooltips to mention exactly what alterations the units would sustain, passing from night to day and vice versa.
3.5 / 5
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Total: 23.5 / 30
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6) GhostThruster
There were some gameplay issues, but I have had a nice feeling, playing with this race.
a) Gameplay
The way you decided to code some stuff prevented you from investigating every possible case.
- Lumber gathering: When a coral bed is destroyed, the gatherers keep on collecting lumber. Apart from that, basing the collection of a resource off a single building makes up a bad gameplay output, if you happen to lose the defensive lines in early stages of the game.
- Megamorph: Great addition, loved it in a classic melee gaming, but I would use it for a hero instead; it's the nature of the skill that disables multiple units, power that only a hero should have.
- Upgrade 1: Unfortunately, I had to upgrade the tier quite fast, because there are not enough of options to fight with. The hero and several Water Hounds is your first army, before heading to Infectors, for which you need to build Reliquary and I admit I cannot figure why this is involved. You could remove it; a single requirement for early game is enough, in my opinion. When the enemy's first wave came into my base, I could hardly defend the town, just with an army of Water Hounds.
- Lumber resource: Doesn't fit with the concept of how it is gathered. Several trees standing around and Barnacle Turtles unable of targeting them is quite inchorent. You could rename the resource into "Aqua Essence" for example, since the way the lumber is gathered is really cool.
- Water Mark: A nice AoE skill, but it should have its mana cost increased.
- Wall of Frost: Simply excellent. The bad thing is that the slow is not an actual AoE, so, if a unit leaves the area of effect, they will still be slowed.
- General debuff output: There was not a real variety of debuffs among the race: slow, knockback and purge were the main hits, resulting a really powerful race in the end.
- Myrmidon: Two disables on the same unit doesn't make sense. I'd remove the Binding Net and add some individual passive skill, that increases attack speed (so as to combine it with Frost ability). The Wall of frost could still hit a Frosted unit, so you should make a check if the unit is invulnerable.
- Ethereal: Not a really fitting name, ethereal represents the substance, I don't see it standing as a unit's name. Ether Shift and Typhoon are hard to control in the heat of battle. Two channeling abilities won't result the highest potential possible for this unit, especially when it bears the Water Mark, which is an autocast ability = delay in buffing. Ether Shift causes problems; end of channeling didn't always remove the buff from the units, so I needed a Couatl to buff them out.
- Magic Hunger: It was castable without the upgrade needed.
- Tunnel: The "hidden" unit kept losing emitted buffs of nearby units. So, this becomes an anti-synergy for the regeneration bonus the Deepsea Aura provides, which would grant further surviveability.
- Abyss Forge: It seemed too pretentious as a building and rather useless. I'd like to see some building upgrades, since you already had the item that could restore lost hit points.
- Turtle Banacle: Unable of targetting anything but buildings; this means that you'd have them attacking only the enemy base itself, if you are using them in an offensive manner. Their speed was too slow though, so it's a case brought under the umbrella of the impossible.
- The gold mine is not destroyed after reaching the amount of 0.
- Your skills turn some enemy buildings into invulnerable (bad coding), so, I can't get victorious, if I spawn certain units.
Not many problems with the gameplay, I in fact liked:
> Turtle Banacles able of loading units in them.
> Water Mark plus Deepsea Aura for greater surviveability.
> Splitting the Basilisks apart, along with the upgrade that let them stun nearby enemies.
> Megamorph
> Tunnel
I believe there is some potential in introducing a new style of playing, but not anything surreal. The gameplay was quite fun, since it had loads of abilities to torment your enemies.
7 / 10
b) Strategy
Your debuffs' variety was rather limited, as I mentioned before. So, this fact also limits the strategies a player can take. Why? Because whether you are using an army of Water Hounds or an army of Basilisks, except for their stats, their effectiveness is quite the same. Ethereals can also be used in knockbacking, exactly like Basilisks split themselves, while knockbacking.
A great strategy that I can clearly anticipate is multiple Turtoises, tunnelled into the ground. Then, a massive Lay Egg fire up and the enemy base can be semi-destroyed.
While the race itself mostly uses slow attacks [Water Hounds, Basilisks, Etherals (through the Etheral Shift), Watcher's Warp Flurry, etc.], you also have knockback and immobility cases, that prevent units from taking damage. I find the race 'confused', it's as if you wanted to bunch it up with certain debuffs for pure ownage.
You mostly got abilities do the job, not stats, which is not the recipe to perfect balance. If I go for offensive strategy, I'll use Myrmidons and Basilisks, if I go for "hidden" attacks, I'll use Turtoises.
The Couatles are unnecessary, I didn't use them in game, at all.
I can hardly make up alternative strategies that deverge the classic "army build-up and slaughter everything".
4 / 10
c) Philosophy
You have placed much ice concept in the race and I am not sure if Naga have to do with ice. Water is different from Ice, which most likely refers to Undead and the Frozen Throne.
3 / 5
d) Appearance
Nothing wrong with it, I liked every model used, from unit models to effect models.
5 / 5
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Total: 19 / 30
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7) Wazzz
Many gameplay issues and a race not well defined.
a) Gameplay
- Sell units: This is a bad addition. Selling over training doesn't have a rally point to lead bought units to a pre-defined point. While upgrading, you can't add units to be sold in the queue. So, we have a problem here, because the player must focus on their camp all the time, to lead recenetly bought (trained) units to the main troops' activity.
- Hideout: It can attack, without the need of Brigands to be loaded within. So, I really find no reason to load them in. What is more, each of them can only load a single brigand, so that would require a great amount of them to hide them all for like no reason.
- Lack of tiers: The fact that I can practically buy units that are supposedly of late-game power makes things pretty predictable: take down any enemy wave early game and become victorious quite fast.
- Mercenary Camp: The problem I mentioned on "Sell units" and "Hideout" cases. You can't define where the trained units will move to, they are simply bought and stand there and they can be loaded in the mercenary camp for no apparent reason. Defending the camp with the presence of hideouts is not the overt way to sucessfully defend. You should at least make buildings attack, when units were loaded within them and boost their damage output, up to the number of loaded units.
- Hero: You can spawn many heroes of the same type, without any limit, as if they are normal warriors. One thing to point out here is lack of variety and originality. Another thing to point out is that several heroes that constitute your troops will die, resulting a spam of heroes' death messages. There is a reason why default Warcraft 3 sets a maximum of 3 heroes at the same time and each of them trainable after an upgrade. You would want to build your heroes item-wise, how exactly will you achieve that, if you create so many of them? Plus, each hero gains a level; spawning additional heroes, later in game, of level 1, once again, will result a complexity of handling them. Obviously, each of them has a powerful set of abilities, which cry out to be used and a variety of levels can result an unpredictable fight.
- Pack Horses: Nice addition to serve as drop-off point, but other than that, useless. Why should I be spamming their creation, when the main hall can also serve the same role? You could at least add an ability, that moves them forward and slow the speed of nearby enemies. For each enemy affected, the speed is further increased. You could also make some riding feature, to make alternative warriors in a race that has a really low variety of.
- Flying Machine: Another loading unit. A simple transportation that shares the role of the classic goblin Flying Machine. Nothing interesting or new.
- Lack of upgrades: You didn't add any upgrades, so, the damage output of your troops is raw and static. You needed to work on that.
I can't say the gameplay was fun, I in fact was annoyed by the absence of rally point in the primary troop building. It does introduce new ways of playing with the loading part and the simple look, but it needed to be worked out way more.
3 / 10
b) Strategy
No strategy here, just waiting for the stock to replenish itself and boost your troops' strength. Lack of rally points doesn't offer new strategies anyway, you missed main stuff here.
2 / 10
c) Philosophy
No problem with it, as I previously mentioned, life can have various aspects, so does the human behaviour (from holy to evil).
5 / 5
d) Appearance
- Workers: Would need another model, because you can't currently see whether they carry any resource or not.
- Book of the Dead: Not fitting for humans to be frank.
- Tooltips: Some remained untouched (I could see Fairie Dragons in Mana Flare ability, Summon Water Elemental in Book of the Dead ability, etc.)
3 / 5
-----------------
Total: 14 / 30
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8) Wraithling
The embodiment of what I asked, but certain features disturbed me.
a) Gameplay
- Mini Gyrocopter: I don't think it should have a resources recycling condition, because summons are not created with resources in the first place. Its role was also unclear; I'd increase the damage output and add a life expiration.
- Black Market: Lumber trading was what I felt most disappointed with. It desolated the whole innovation of the race, since I had to trade the lumber all the time. I would create abilities, that would work like "programs" and the trading to be done over the time, automatically. The manual trading felt really boring. The stock time of the items was high, when the market was initially built. I also didn't like the fact that a patron should be nearby, when lumber trading was within. It should be always available for trading.
- Flame Junk: The cooldown could be set to 11 seconds for every level, it was not that powerful anyway.
- Scout Machine: The unit didn't make sense to be trained off the town hall. I would also add True Sight to them, because Priestess of the Moon wastes only mana to create such unit and you buy it in this case.
- Morale Boost: The message should definitely be represented by an expiring timer, than a game message.
- Defend: This skill on Spearmen should be adjusted into lower stats, since you overpower them.
- Tiers: I don't see why tiers are based on recycling. Recycling is an extra feature, not a must. Of course you would upgrade your resource-recycling, but forcing the player to do so is by no means mandatory.
- Flare: An ability being bore by three unit types doesn't offer new gameplay aspects, it instead makes the ability too common.
- Mediocopter: Their EMP ability didn't make anything to buildings in particular, as the tooltip states. I wouldn't leave them attackless, because their main role is to destroy enemies' mana. While they do that, they could use some attack to gain an effective role. Other than that, I found them quite useless. I wouldn't want o upgrade up to Tier 2, just for the sake of their repair ability, which only repairs 50 hp, an amount not that big for the 622 max hp of the Chariots.
- Gryphon: A really weak unit. Its Solidarity bonus was maximum hp bonus, so they would most likely focus on surviveability of your troops, but they should have a more effective damage output. Definite con for such a useful bonus. What is more, they shouldn't have Normal damage, but Piercing.
- Chariot: They already have solidarity bonus, which should be more efficient than the Extra Defense skill, which is redundant anyway.
- Medi-Tech upgrade: I don't see why this upgrade has a time base of 1 second. I know the role of Mediocopters require a fast build up to heal units or drain mana out of enemies, but it should at least be 10 seconds.
- Pick up Guardsman: A guardsman on a flying unit with a ranged attack doesn't make sense. It should be combined with a Spearman instead, since the Solidarity bonus of attack speed would make the damage dealt more effective. Gryphons already have maximum hp bonus = surviveability, so, Parry doesn't look like the best combination.
- Disassemble: The unit types this ability can convert are not many, resulting a situational skill that isn't sufficient to support the role of an ultimate. Plus, the bonus returned is 45% and additional 21% from Solidarity bonus = 66%. In order to make it worthy of a skill, it should return >100% of the unit's original resource cost. Otherwise, I don't see why I should sacrifice a unit I might have recently trained.
- Mount Pegasus vs. Pick up Guardsmen: I don't see why the first one is permanent, while the second one is reversable. Both should be reversable. Plus, a combination of a Guardsman and a Gryphon results Parry and HP bonus together. Why Pegasus only offers Magic Resistance Bonus? Shouldn't it also have a combined Attack Speed, to ensure the maximum potential of Ricochet? Pegasus should have less speed, it's too fast.
- Propulsion Boost: I don't think it should target Mechanical too. Boosting mechanicals with extra attack rate, when there are units with solidarity bonuses, leads to a powerful buildings-destructive unit.
- Steam Bomber: Another transformation skill. While the other two (Pick up Guardsmen and Mount Pegasus) don't cost resources, this one does. Good for the fact that you achieve variety, but there's no variety already, with this amount of transformation skills.
- Collision: I don't see why would I spend resources to transform the Chariot and make it suicide for a single air counterpart that deals standard damage of 720. Useless ability for the role of this unit. I'd use it on Pegasus instead, who already has a more passive role than this one. Clearly, Steam Bomber is the tank against buildings, nothing more, nothing less. The solidarity bonus defines it that way, not me.
- Reassemble: Kind of contradicts with the whole recycling process. This skill doesn't support the said system at all. Great skill, I admit, but not for that kind of cost. As an ability, it should retain some neutral aspect and lessen the requirements from double cost to 50% of original cost. The unit returned should have lowered stats. That way, it would look balanced. A good alternative of the classic "Raise Dead" ability.
- Genius: This unit emits a solidarity bonus of "Increment", so, it wouldn't be able of standing alone in the fields. For this kind of role-absense, I'd switch its damage type to Normal or Piercing and make it a ground unit. You have created many flying ones already and the original Undead race can tear your troops apart quite easily with the presense of Crypt Fiends.
The gameplay was generally interesting and new to the classic approach of Warcraft 3 gameplay. Many features contributed for an altered face of default races. It also hosted many problems, so that would also bear many cons within, the ones I mentioned above.
7 / 10
b) Strategy
The features of Recycling, Solidarity and Trade Penalty offered lots of extra tactics as to how-to-handle the town itself and the troops, solidarity-wise. Quite a great strategy with all those bonuses, that let the player decide battle-specifics, up to the enemies they have to confront. The only problem was the lumber trading, which was manual.
8 / 10
c) Philosophy
Fine human race.
5 / 5
d) Appearance
Everything was fine.
5 / 5
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Total: 25 / 30
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9) Veljkom
Interesting aspects, but the early game could easily collapse.
a) Gameplay
- Skeleton Warriors: They should have greater damage, because they hardly could deal any. Although they are cheaper than a footman and gain the upgrade to boost their surviveability, they still needed more crowd control. An undead enemy with multiple carrions could bring my entire town down with the first assault. Dead Guardians were close to the damage output, yet they were created just by an ability.
- Burning/Ice Archers: They definitely shouldn't cost extra resources for transformation. It should just be an ability of permanent change. Apart from that, the food cost is 1, when normal archers' cost is 2.
Finally, the Ice archers should cost an equal amount of resources with Fire ones, because you are supposed to give the player an option out of two; if one costs more, it means that the resulting warrior (fire) is stronger than the ice one.
- Illusion Walk: This skill's learn tooltip is of Blademaster's. That tooltip says that it deals bonus damage, yet the actual skill doesn't do that. To be honest, it needed that kind of buff up, because the illusion itself isn't that powerful.
- Wraith: Evasion on a flying unit is rather risky for classic warcraft 3. Most units cannot attack flying units, which already limits gameplay cases. A good counterpart against the Storm Hammered Gryphon Riders with their AoE attack and the powerful Frost Wyrms, but still, evasion is too much. The only reason I'd approve of this is their concept, that perfectly binds with the concept of a ghost. Frost flash is not the perfect synergy with the evasion. Slowing down the attack speed is already enough to prevent damage in a fast rate.
- Sky Barges: Alternative workers, that surprised me of their potential. Really nice concept, damage should be as it is, so that's a balanced unit. An active army of those could debuff whole enemy troops, by slowing down their attack preparations. The Blight Obelisks are great in every situation. They can be combined with the Dead Guardians to heal their weak hp and aid everyone in the battlefields. The limiting option of 5 was a way to balance the spamming of those building types, but 5 for the whole race can either be good or bad. If you have created 5 structures of every possible type, additional Sky Barges are rather useless; they already lack damage. So, I would instead create an ability, based on Charge Gold and Lumber, that creates a building and the building would have a countdown timer (a certain duration), to flatten up a possible mess. Finally, the structures Sky Barges can build shouldn't have the ability to attack; they serve more like a ward, not an actual tower. Defense should also be decreased to 3.Fear Aura works for allies, not enemies, so you actually debuff your own units. You made a mistake here
- Raise Guardians: The cooldown is too high for the strength of this unit. You should decrease it to 45.
- Archlich: This hero was way weaker than Bone Ranger. His first skills (other than the ultimate) doesn't offer an effective back up of your troops. Plague Curse should definitely be replaced. You have one skill to sacrifice your units (in order to gain mana back) and one to heal them (?).
- Skeletal Marauder: They don't bear the ability you claim them to have in the tooltip (Spawn Skeletal Grunts), so the upgrade is redundant.
- Unholy Ward: This one shouldn't be autocast, since the auras don't stack with each other. The Skeletal Mage already has the Animate Dead ability, so, one would probably raise an animated unit, than a single ward, that boosts attack damage only by 10%.
- Backpack: It was a quite unnecessary upgrade. You have given the ability of carrying to many unit types. I would only give it to Sky Barge (for it makes a good mix with their role) and maybe the Skeletal Marauders.
- Necrolyte: Malediction shouldn't be there; the chance to miss is achieved by their evasion already. Didn't even cast this skill. Apart from that, Frost Flash does almost the same thing.
- Enhance: This ability, along with Fear Aura (of which you forgot to alter the Targets Allowed), couldn't be combined, causing the buff to disappear almost instantly.
Gameplay in general was moderate, fun-wise, there was not a huge variety of abilities to enthusiastically explore, most of them were debuffs and raise skeletons. This race stands out with a huge amount of corpses nearby, which is situational. It was a bit complicated, because each unit had its own role and identity, which was followed by many spells and abilities, so, that made it even harder to control every one of them. The heroes could be more.
I liked the role of Sky Barges, the Eternal Servitude (which by the way was contrary to the role of most units: raise skeletons), the Ice Prison skill, Damnation, the concept of the food-producing buildings to raise guardians and allow themselves to defend the town more effectively.
6.5 / 10
b) Strategy
Definitely not a simple race editing, this product was given thought. There were some strategy-supportive units, like Sky Barges, Spectres and Archers, who could be transformed into different skeletons and by extension aid in different situations. I could say strategy can have many variations.
7 / 10
c) Philosophy
The Wraiths were out of place, your race was skeleton-themed not Undead in general. Frost Flash and Ice Prison don't look like abilities of a skeleton.
4 / 5
d) Appearance
The models were fine, there were tooltips that were not changed (like Death Coil, of which the actual name was Death Coil Chain, Illusion Walk learn tooltip), tooltips that didn't do what they said, e.g. Shadow Fire that doesn't increase nearby units' damage. Sky Barges' structures were not obelisks, Tomb of Bones name didn't match the role of the building (items' seller). Finally, Frost Flash didn't have any frost visual effect.
2.5 / 5
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Total: 20 / 30
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10) Vermillion Edict
Inspiring divinity, but many flaws.
a) Gameplay
- Perenolde's Blessing: 25% extra hp regeneration is way too much for a single passive of a structure. I'd decrease it to 10%.
- Skullbreaker: I don't even know why a caster type unit has the Taunt ability. Its max health isn't enough to sustain 10 damage sources simultaneously. Entrhall does the same thing, but on a unit that can definitely support this kind of role. The Regenerate ability should be autocast, because lots of units have active abilities and it's hard to control them. Storm Surge is redundant, the damage it deals is minor.
- Size: The buildings' size was huge, although it was more realistic, it brought up several gameplay issues.
- Tavern: Since it's not a classic item shop and it also sells units as well hosts a couple of upgrades for them, it should require any unit around, not just heroes.
- Netherlord's Hammer: A weird ability. It spawns selectable orbs for the summoning player, but, you can't see where they are going. Their damage is also minor. They have two abilities, one of which requires mana to cast, but they don't even have maximum mana.
- Attack Dog: This unit is really weak for the abilities it has. It has Howl of Terror which makes it a first-line unit, but its hit points are not enough to effectively debuff the enemies, without dying. For a unit that is trained off a building that requires third tier, it is way too easy to confront.
- Noble: A tank unit with evasion is a powerful combination. Definitely not balanced. Their base armor is really high as well.
- Tower: Useless structure. There is already the Spire. Default Human race has a neutral tower that upgrades itself into offensive tower variations. This one serves only as a watch point, something that a classic ward would most likely do as well. The invisibility detection it bears is combined in the Guard Tower of default Humans, which can also attack enemies. I built one and I didn't care for being the target of the enemy waves. Desperation didn't work, it only left a visual attack power on the tower, but lacked the actual ability to attack.
- Arcanist: Two abilities that increase life regeneration on a single unit is too much. The first one debuffs the allies into boosting the regeneration of theirs, so, I would prefer spending 200 mana for an additionally AoE health regeneration, than debuffing my allies for 60 mana.
Arcane Arrows didn't even work for me.
- Gatherer: Gatherers have Call of Battle but the requirements are not right; whenever I tried to convert them, an error showed me that you didn't switch the requirements of structure and units from the original Human race.
- Heresy: It doesn't "massively" boost the stats of the hero, so it's a useless transformation.
- Siege Attack: Many units have Siege type of attack. Another imbalanced case. Their spellcasting role doesn't match with their attacking attribute.
- Atramancers: Their Atrum Exuro doesn't synergise with Netherlord's Hammer skill. You etherealise them and no spell follows as a damaging component.
- Ex-Bishop: His role is quite ambiguous. Although he is a tank, he has four abilities at his disposal, most of them being extremely weak. I hardly had the chance to cast them, because I had Ex-Bishops in the first line to sustain incoming damage, before the dps units do their destruction quest. Holy Fire is the same to Siege ability of the Fallen Knight's and it doesn't offer anything special to a simple unit, while they were equally powerful: 20 damage per orb.
Rend and Shockwave don't deal damage to the caster, as the tooltip states.
- Load and Repair: While some buildings had the Load ability, right clicking on half-destroyed structures was issuing the loading, not the repair.
- Tower of Domination: a) It's not even a tower. b) All heroes could be trained at the same time. c) I disliked the fact that you could train simple units within the altar-themed structure.
Gameplay was really complex. Buildings are hosting upgrades for units they do not train, other upgrades don't mention exactly what abilities they unlock (e.g. Training from Beastlord's Villa) and a complexity of this level doesn't make the game fun. There were definitely some facts I liked, but most likely, when the race has a wide variety of units with many life regeneration skills, units with many abilities that do not always (or at all) work, supposed tanks that share the role of a spellcaster as well, it gets hard to control several of them. A race with so many unit options should at least have maximum food increased. I didn't fancy the Tavern's role as well, which also sells units, just like Mercenary Camps do and the general gameplay was not clearly thought through (with some features completely unnoticed, e.g. the fact that towers don't attack, even when running the Desperation upgrade or the non-working Sanctify).
4 / 10
b) Strategy
The strategy is always dependent on the gameplay, so a complex gameplay leads the player to hardly anticipate and design their next tactic. On the first hand, you can create tank units with Arcanists to spam life regeneration abilities. On the other hand, you can spam several Atramancers to exterminate a decent amount of enemies and run them back to town, but this tactic requires mastery of controlling them and the ratio is 1:1, so, 1 Attramancer devours one enemy at a time and for a unit with that amount of damage, I'm not sure if it's the way to dominate an enemy's base. Still, a good strategy.
Other units' roles are most likely a placement to fill the structures' training slots. Their power is equal to creeps in Neutral camps and I don't see them as an outstanding source of power against several allies attacking your base.
5 / 10
c) Philosophy
Although the race's main aspect was divine power, it also hosted units out of concept, such as the Atramancer, who would refer to an Undead race, and the Skullbreaker (same as Atramancer). Apart from that and some icons that were out of Human concept, there's nothing wrong with it.
3.5 / 5
d) Appearance
Many DISBTN icons missing, some tooltips, e.g. Taunt didn't even explain why a Skullbreaker would be able of attracting nearby units into attacking him. Farmstead and Tower of Domination didn't look that human. The heroes' models were smaller than the normal units and they didn't even have the hero's glow, to indicate their class. Finally, Atramancers are supposed to transmute some of the Tavern's items, yet you don't mention which items and what this transmution procedure actually is, when they are single units that cannot use inventory items.
3.5 / 5
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Total: 16 / 30
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11) JokeMaster
Harmonic and simple.
a) Gameplay
- Upgrades: Defend upgrade didn't enable the Defense ability. Archon didn't require the upgrades to cast the abilities, you forgot to add the upgrade requirement in them. Cleric Training is given twice in the Temple of Quel'Dorei. Cleric Master training is not removed, if I upgrade the clerics to Arch ones.
- Lumber: I liked the idea that lumber-specific harvesters are trained through the lumber drop-off point, but the lumber gathering is delayed too much. You should at least have 1 lumber spirit on start.
- Templar, Arcane Guardian: For Templar, 4 food cost is much, would reduce it to 3. For Arcane Guardian, 5 food is too much, would reduce it to 4 or 3, considering that it is not that powerful as a unit.
- Resurrection: You are giving a simple unit too much authority. You could make the healing wave autocast for better player control and resurrection amount of raised units down to 2.
- Resource costs: The structures in particular cost low amount of resources and it's too pretentious. For an upgare of improved harvesting, you should tone it up a bit.
- Illusionist (Illusion): This ability had no mana cost. Just because the illusions don't deal any damage, it doesn't mean that it shouldn't cost mana; illusions have a purpose: confusion, and that sounds enough to have a mana cost for.
- Mage Huntress: Her role reminds me of DotA's Magina and I frankly believe this is the map she belongs to; for a ladder game? Hm, don't think so. It requires great focus on the hero.
- Ballista: I couldn't train it, because their requirement was that of the Night Elves.
- Eagle: I would switch the damage type to Piercing. There is no excuse of using such type (Magic) in third-tier units.
- Ranger / Archer and Eagles: If you upgrade to Rangers (which is a normal situation), you are no longer able of training archers and by extension riding eagles. You could at least pick Rangers and result less damage, so as to assimilate with the Archers', but increase the speed (or maybe leave the Hide ability to have an invisible army of flying units, that would be interesting!).
- Arcane Guardian: For such a high training time, they should have an hp and damage increase.
Not many flaws in the race, but I can't say I discovered some extravagant gameplay. It's ol' classic Warcraft, I expected more at this part. The balance was fine, I admit. You needed to spice it up a bit, you have had some seriously inspiring background, but the roles of the units were very familiar with what I know.
5 / 10
b) Strategy
Again, nothing innovative, train units to march on the enemy bases. It did remind of simple race editing in most parts. You had one kind of each unit role, dps, primary tank, late-game tank and ballista, which doesn't offer various tactics to follow. The only variation in strategy is the Eagle/Archer marriage, which cannot be used, if I upgrade to Ranger and as a concept, it is already known from the Night Elves. I didn't see any personal flare in the race.
4 / 10
c) Philosophy
I am not sure whether Archons and Arcane Guardians belong to the whole race's philosophy; just because they were summoned by some great magi, it doesn't mean that they are having an actual part in the race itself. Even if they were supposedly summoned, why the town should be able of controlling them? Other than that, the race is perfect concept-wise.
4 / 5
d) Appearance
Good choice of buildings, but your town hall's model was bugged. Dying units left staves on the ground and the town hall's bugged vertices were attached on them. You should consider working more on tooltips, because some of them remained unchanged or had some spelling errors.
3.5 / 5
-----------------
Total: 16.5 / 30
((Pharaoh_'s judging) * 2.3333) + ((Votes / Total votes) * 0.3) = Total score
Lich Prince: (21.4 * 2.3333) + ((10 / 59) * 0.3) = 49.9834675
FuzzyFury: (15 * 2.3333) + ((1 / 59) * 0.3) = 35.0045847
Narogog: (21 * 2.3333) + ((1 / 59) * 0.3) = 49.0043847
67Chrome: (24 * 2.3333) + ((12 / 59) * 0.3) = 56.0602169
Sage Chow: (23.5 * 2.3333) + ((9 / 59) * 0.3) = 54.8783127
GhostThruster: (19 * 2.3333) + ((2 / 59) * 0.3) = 44.3428695
Wazzz: (14 * 2.3333) + ((3 / 59) * 0.3) = 32.6814542
Wraithling: (25 * 2.3333) + ((13 / 59) * 0.3) = 58.3986017
Veljkom: (20 * 2.3333) + ((6 / 59) * 0.3) = 46.6965085
Vermillion Edict: (16 * 2.3333) + ((0 / 59) * 0.3) = 37.3328
JokeMaster: (16.5 * 2.3333) + ((2 / 59) * 0.3) = 38.5096195
4th - Lich Prince
5th - Narogog
6th - Veljkom
7th - GhostThruster
8th - JokeMaster
9th - Vermillion Edict
10th - FuzzyFury
11th - Wazzz
5th - Narogog
6th - Veljkom
7th - GhostThruster
8th - JokeMaster
9th - Vermillion Edict
10th - FuzzyFury
11th - Wazzz
Poll | Contest
). If there is a next techtree contest coming soon, let's hope we'll see less assholes like me and more of people like GhostThruster, Lich Prince, 67chrome, Sage Chow, and Matt (I name people who did reviews, no offense intended to my other fellow contestants..). Thanks for reading this paragraph of crap, good night and see you peeps on the battlefield next time 
I'd bet that my gryphon guardsmen spam is not a worry for a player preparing to do a mass water hounds spam, but that also is just my theory. That's why I think its high time to put a few races together and test them out so that speculations like that can be proven or dis-proven once and for all. So, want to have a go for it GhostT?
