1.32.9 PTR PATCH NOTES UPDATE

Blizzard said: October 13, 2020 Lok’tar! Once again, thank you all of the amazing feedback you’ve given to us through this PTR. The online posts, streams, and videos have been extremely helpful. In today’s new PTR build, we’re making a few adjustments to specifically help the Human vs. Undead matchup. We’re also reverting all previous changes to promote late game air. Although we want to increase the viability of all units, we feel with the current scope, it would be too risky to release these changes into the live environment. We hope to revisit this after the current meta has settled down with the existing changes planned. Please remember these changes are a work in progress and subject to change. And again, thank you for your continued feedback! -The Warcraft 3 Team October 13 PTR Changes Human Mountain King Thunderclap Damage Cap removed and damage reduced from 60/115/160 to 60/100/145. Developers’ notes: While the damage cap of Thunderclap sounded good, we have seen counter-intuitive play happening, such as mitigating the Mountain King’s damage by surrounding him with more than 8 units. This indirectly increased mass ghouls and skeleton strategies, which was undesired. Damage caps can also lead to player frustration. Castle research gold cost reduced from 360 to 320. Developers’ notes: The goal here is increase the incentives of human to go to Castle as well as promote some 1 base options. Undead Crypt Lord Level 2 and Level 3 Carrion Beetles hit points reduced from 330/490 to 300/440. Developers’ notes: The increased HP on Carrion Beetles were warranted due to their reduced movement speed, as well as their new requirement on burrow. However, we felt the current HP was too high and have reduced the amount of HP increased. Ghouls & Abomination Cannibalize now requires research again. Cannibalize moved to Necropolis. Developers’ notes: We decided to move Cannibalize to the Necropolis, which could promote variety in opening Undead builds, while still giving a player a choice on what they want to invest into. Gargoyle prioritize now will no longer stop the unit when activating. Added Status Icon. Skeleton Warrior & Skeleton Mage Level changed from 1 to 2 (Experienced bounty increased from 12 to 20). Developers’ notes: This will increase skeleton experience from 12 to 20, and while this will apply to all matchups, this should specifically help UD vs Human skeleton harass. Neutral Pitlord Level 1 Rain of fire range reduced from 800 to 700. Developers’ notes: This change is specifically targeting the Undead Pitlord push against Human. Pandaren Brewmaster Breath of Fire damage cap removed, and Breath of Fire initial damage per level reduced. Damage reduced from 65/125/170 to 60/100/140. Breath of Fire reduced DoT per level. Damage reduced from 7/14/21 to 7/12/18. Developers’ notes: While evaluating the damage cap on Thunderclap, we also saw the inconsistency that damage caps cause, so we felt this necessary. Items Wand of the Wind Cyclone cooldown removed, and Charges reduced from 3 to 2. Developers’ notes: Reverting the cooldown and reducing the charges helps solve the original issue of the Wand being able to take a specific hero out of the fight for an extended period of time. Reverted Changes Gryphon Riders build time reverted from 40 to 45 seconds, and Gold cost reverted from 260 to 280. Wind Rider Gold cost reverted from 245 to 265. Frost Wyrm build time reverted from 60 to 65 seconds, and gold cost reverted from to 355 to 385. Chimera build time reverted from 55 to 60. Developers’ notes: We will potentially revisit all of the above at a later date. Scout Tower / Guard Tower / Cannon Tower / Arcane Tower repair time reverted back up 5 seconds. Developers’ notes: We decided to revert this change with concern for potential tower rush strategies re-emerging.

1.32.9 PTR PATCH NOTES UPDATE

Blizzard said: October 6, 2020 Lok’tar! We would like to thank everyone for providing very valuable and passionate feedback. Going into the first iteration of the PTR, the Warcraft 3 team knew some of the balance changes may have been too extreme. However, we wanted to test the impact of the changes and gauge community feedback. In today’s iteration of PTR, we’re scaling back on some of the changes, as well as including some additional changes that were highly requested. Please remember these changes are a work in progress and subject to change. We plan to do one more balance pass before this patch goes live. Thanks! HUMAN Arcane Tower Increase Summon damage reverted from 25 to 20. Developers’ notes: After careful observation and playtesting, we feel this change didn’t accomplish what we originally intended. We are reverting this change in favor of buffing peasant HP and increasing repair speed on towers slightly. See below for more info. Peasants HP increased from 220 to 230. Developers’ notes: Increased HP should give peasants more survivability before an arcane tower can be built. We thank the community for this suggestion. Scout Tower / Guard Tower / Cannon Tower / Arcane Tower Reduce repair time by 5 seconds. Developers’ notes: A slight survivability increase to help humans mitigate certain mid game pushes Spell Breaker Armor reduced from 3 to 2. Developers’ notes: The goal here is to try to get away from the mass Spell breakers in Human Mirror. Rifleman Attack delay reduced from 1.4 to 1.35. Developers’ notes: With the additional changes to Human, we felt that this change needed to be reverted. Mountain King Thunder Clap now has a max damage cap of 8. Developers’ notes: If there are more than 8 units within the AOE range, it’ll still damage all units but with a decreased damage on each unit. Custom Maps shouldn’t be affected by this change, but map makers can modify the new field in editor to change the maximum damage if they want. This feature has been requested for a while, and we’re thankful for your patience. We look forward to your feedback on the exact number here. Sorceress Slow Movement Speed reduced from 60% to 55%. Developers’ notes: A slight movement speed reduction of Slow. This is to improve the Orc vs. Human matchup and to slightly improve the Human vs. Night Elf match up to compensate for the lack of dispel. Siege Engine Tank experience bounty increased from 60 to 85. Developers’ notes: Recent changes to Undead repair rate could potentially increase the viability of Siege Engines, so we are increasing the experience bounty, which we feel is too low. We may also reduce the health in the future. Gryphon Riders Build time reduced from 45 to 40 seconds. Gold cost reduced from 280 to 260. Developers’ notes: To promote usage of late game air, this applies to all races. ORC Great Hall Supply granted increased from 10 to 11. Developers’ notes: This should help provide an early scouting option for the Orc vs Night Elf matchup. Tauren Chieftain War Stomp stun duration against Heroes increased from 1.5/2/2.5 to 2/2.5/3 (2/3/4 originally) Shockwave mana cost reduced from 100 to 90 Developers’ notes: We have scaled back our changes to War Stomp change and reduced Shockwave’s mana cost to 90 to make it a viable alternative. Wind Rider Gold cost reduced from 265 to 245. Developer Notes: A slight cost reduction as Wind Riders are fragile and we could perhaps see most usage out of them at this cost. UNDEAD Destroyer Cast point time increased from 0.5 to 0.66 (0.83 originally). Developers’ notes: We liked the direction this was heading, as it improved response time for the destroyer when Devouring Magic. However, at 0.5 the ability was an almost an instant dispel. At 0.66 we have improved responsiveness without losing counter play. Crypt Lord Level 2 and Level 3 Carrion Beetles hit points increase from 275/410 to 330/490. Movement speed reduced from 290 to 280 (all levels). Developers’ notes: After evaluating the recent changes, we felt the movement speed of the Carrion Beetles needed to be brought down slightly, but we’ve decided to compensate this with a HP increase. This should make it slightly harder for Carrion Beetles to get surrounds but should increase their viability in the later parts of the game in direct battles. Death Knight Unholy Aura movement speed changed from 10/15/30 to 10/17.5/25 (10/20/30 originally). Developers’ notes: Adjusting scaling to feel more appropriate. Level 1 remains unchanged. Ghouls & Abominations Cannibalize researched by default. Developers’ notes: This is an experimental change to see if this promotes more ghoul play and creates more variety of UD openers. Gargoyle Now has a new toggle ability “Prioritize” which will allow the Gargoyle to Prioritize flying units over ground units. Developers’ notes: Something that was requested by the community to improve the useability of this unit. When turned on the Gargoyle will prioritize air units over ground units but will still attack ground units if the player force attacks a unit. Necromancer Unholy Frenzy HP drain reduced from 3 to 2 HP/s. Developers’ notes: A minor change to try and promote Undead usage of support casters. Spirit Tower / Nerubian Tower Repair rate reduced from 60 to 45 (35 originally). Developers’ notes: There was a bit of confusion around this change. The repair rate is how long it takes for a building to be repaired, so the higher the number, the longer it takes. We original dialed it up to an extreme number to see how it would feel, but after numerous playtests, we’ve decided to settle it at 45. This is 5 less than an Orc burrow, and taking into consideration that there will usually be a maximum of 5 acolytes repairing it, we feel this makes the most sense. Frost Wyrm Buildtime reduced from 65 to 60 seconds. Gold cost reduced from 385 to 355. Developers’ notes: To promote usage of late game air, this applies to all races. NIGHT ELF Wisp Detonate mana drain increased from 25 to 35 (50 originally). Developers’ notes: We knew that reducing the mana drain on wisps to 25 may have been too extreme, but we wanted to see how it would feel. We have decided to increase the drain amount to 35 (from 50). Archer HP reduced from 260 to 250. Developers’ notes: This is a slight calibration on a past change to archers, since right now they are a little too durable, especially considering the Elune’s Grace passive ability. Chimaera Build time reduced from 60 to 55 seconds Developers’ notes: To promote usage of late game air, this applies to all races. ITEMS Tome of Retraining Cost reduced from 300 to 200. Developers’ notes: This is an experimental change, but we hope to encourage some new builds and potentially create more ability variety throughout the different phases of the game. Wand of the Wind Cooldown increased from 0 second to 5 seconds. Developers’ notes: The power to instantly Cyclone 3 units with 1 item was too much. The Cyclone ability now has a 5 second cooldown, so this change brings this item more in line with the ability itself. CUSTOM GAMES Fixed a bug with custom units in Classic Mode that was causing shadows to not display.

Greetings, everyone. It's been 2 years and 2 months since the last time Sunken City received a major update. However it was at the very next day after its release that I started working on version 2.4.5, which is to this day my largest and most ambitious update. Needless to say, the map has received an array of new features, updates and improvements including a complete rework of the shop and overhaul to the kits of all heroes. Below, I will touch upon the most important changes.

For a long time, a major focus in Sunken City has been the customization of your character. In 2.4.5, we've taken that aspect of the map to the next level by significantly expanding all of the systems that allow you, the player, to modify the playstyle of your hero, namely:
• The stats that your have access to in the game.
• The Glyphs.
• The Talents.
• The abilities of each hero, their design, their type and the builds they allow access to.
• The new "Specialization" system.

Let's take a closer look at some of them:

Two new stats have been introduced to Sunken City: Potency and Haste.

Potency: increases any damage you deal by a flat amount equal to the stat value. This is essentially a stat that will mostly help on-damage and summoner builds, but can still function for anyone.
Haste: increases your hero's spellcast frequency by reducing the cooldowns of his abilities. This stat's value basically represents how much more frequently your hero will cast spells.
Other: Additionally, a custom UI has been added which tracks the values for some of the more common custom stats in Sunken City.

Spell Types have been expanded upon in 2.4.5. The 'On-Hit' type has been completely removed, while the old Damaging Type has been split into Magical and Physical. This change mostly affects the itemization and reinforces the theme of certain characters. Additionally a Summoning Type has been added.

This leaves us with the following Types:
• Physical
• Magical
• Healing
• Summoning
• N/A

This allows for a more defined structure of the builds:

CLICK ME

Builds	Description	Best Stats
Magical Spellcaster	Pure spellcasters with theme closest to the 'Mage/Wizard' fantasy that most often deal high amounts of burst damage.	Primary Attribute, Haste, Mastery, Mana
Physical Spellcaster	Pure spellcasters associated with the theme of a brawler or a fighter that deals high damage with abilities where unlike the Magical Spellcaster, there is little to none magic involved.	Attack Damage, Health, Primary Attribute, Haste, Mastery
Battlecaster	A hybrid playstyle which brings together auto-attacks and magical spellcasting.	Attack Speed, Primary Attribute, Mastery, Mana
Crit	Pure auto-attacker who relies on consistent and high damage, dealt mostly with pure attacks and little spellcasting.	Critical Strike, Attack Speed, Attack Damage, Primary Attribute
Summoner	Playstyle that focuses on spawning and empowering minions that do the dirty work for the Hero.	Pet Damage, Potency, Primary Attribute, Mastery
On-damage	Focuses on dealing a multitude of damage instances - every number on the screen has chance to trigger powerful effects or is increased by flat amounts.	Potency, Primary Attribute, Mastery
Support	Enhances the defensive and offensive capabilities of the team.	Primary Attribute, Mastery, Haste, Mana
Tank	High durability and resilience, the Tank also keeps danger away from his allies.	Armor, Spell Damage Reduction, Health, Primary Attribute

2.4.5 will introduce 1 new Glyph per category along with reworks or replacements for existing Glyphs. Here is a preview of these changes:

New Glyphs

	Glyph of Beastfury: Your summons spawn with 25% Critical Strike chance.
	Glyph of Siphoning: Whenever another hero gets healed by a Healing Type effect, you restore health equal to 25% of the healed amount. Overhealing amount is not applied to this effect.
	Glyph of Mindhaste: Increases your Haste by 8% and reduces the cooldowns of all abilities by 0,5 seconds.
	Glyph of Trepidation: Affects enemies in 600 range with Trepidation Aura, which causes them to take 8% more damage from allied units, not including your own units. This effect does not stack.

Reworked / Replacement Glyphs

	Glyph of Affinity: Increases the damage dealt by Magical and Physical Type effects by 18%.
	Glyph of Supremacy: Grants you an additional Talent Slot.
	Glyph of Crippling: Your attacks apply Cripple on the target for 3 seconds, which reduces the damage dealt by attacks by 20% and movement speed by 25%.

Additionally, balance changes have been made to existing Glyphs, which will be detailed in the Changelog after release.



A new feature has been added to the game called "Specializations".

Those of you that have played the game before might be familiar with the 'Mastery' Stat which functioned differently based on the Class you played. In 2.4.5, Mastery now also changes based on your hero's Specialization.

Additionally, Specializations provide a powerful bonus which defines and shapes the build you are going to create throughout the game. This bonus often times represents an ability change in the Hero's kit.

For example, the Shaman now has an ability in his kit which Summons a Fire Elemental. While this unit acts as a meat shield in his Restoration Specialization (Support) and as the core unit of the Elemental Specialization (Summoner), it is out of place in his Enhancement Specialization (Battlecaster = Auto-attacker/Spellcaster hybrid), where the Summon Fire Elemental ability is instead replaced with Elemental Overload which enhances the Shaman's Chain Lightning ability.

In 2.4.5 every single hero has received a new ability, which may or may not alter between specializations. The theme of each hero has been reinforced by the Specializations, the new abilities they have, and their Talents. Speaking of which - 5 new Talents have been added to each hero, with the Talents Menu now being split in 2 pages.

The shop has undergone massive amount of changes in 2.4.5. The items now follow a design philosophy which aims to improve customization and the amount of choices you have available. While previously, players had to essentially look for all of the Crit items to complete their Crit build, for example; in 2.4.5, the items will have more broad usage and will rarely be usable by only 1 build. To paint a better picture, each of the offensive builds in the game will still have access to two items (now called and labeled as 'Relics' in the Shop) which will provide stats and effects which fit just one build, but the rest will be a mix of stats and effects that can fit more than one build and would not be optimal all the time.

Here is also an example of an item as it appears in 2.4.4 and its reworked version for 2.4.5:

(2.4.4) Silver Bow +15 Agility +20 Damage Equip: Grants nearby allies Trueshot Aura which increases ranged attack damage by 15%. Auras with the same name do not Stack. Equip: Increases the damage of auto-attacks by up to 20% based on the distance between your hero and his target.

(2.4.5) Silver Bow +8 All Stats +30% Attack Speed Equip: Shoots a silver arrow every 2 seconds at a random nearby enemy unit that deals 110% of your Attack Damage and is registered as an auto-attack.

As you can see, while the first version is purely a Crit item, the second is an item that can be used by any sort of auto-attacker like Crit, Battlecaster, Auto-attacker Healer / Auto-attacker Tank and possibly other hybrid builds that simply want more attacks.

While the above mentioned changes highlight the most important features and changes, they are far from the only new things in 2.4.5. Several reworked Challenges, tons of new droppable items, new custom UI for several ingame systems, improvements to several puzzles, changes to enemies and improvements to Heroic Mode, new Backpack abilities, Quality of Life improvements, Balance changes to all Heroes, bugfixes and a lot more is also included in this huge endavour which has taken 2 years of my life to complete.

I want to give my special thanks to the following people, who have helped me immensely, and without whom this version wouldn't be what it is:
• First and foremost - my friend and buddy in designing this map @Vunjo. He has played a fundamental part in many design choices that I've taken not only in this update but also throughout the years.
• @Bribe who was always there to help me integrate his incredible Damage Engine into this map. Many and incredibly important features simply wouldn't have been possible without his genious work.
• @PROXY who has created several models specifically for this map from scratch along with a bunch of small (but important) edits and fixes.
• All the Testers from my Discord Server, who dedicated countless hours into playing the map and have reported a ton of bugs and gave me great suggestions along the way.

See you in Sunken City!

- Spasmaster

Since the early days of the Hive Workshop, we have made much progress. But that progress came with a cost. Our site has changed. And despite our advances in both arts and scripting.
We can no longer deny what is clear. The time for Reforged is here. So we turn our gaze to new possibilities - to HD.
And embark on a new journey in our site's history. A journey into the unknown. To discover new maps. New assets. New worlds...

A new beginning. For all Warcraft 3 modders.

We needed a home for the assets made for the HD graphics in Reforged. And thusly we have made new resource sections! These new sections include HD Reforged Models, HD Reforged Skins, HD Reforged Icons and a whole new section: Ported Models, Ported Skins and Ported Icons.

You will find these new sections under their respective resource category i.e. Models, Skins and Icons.

HD Reforged Assets: Models, Skins and Icons made for the HD graphics in Reforged. Ported Assets: Models, skins and icons converted to work inside Warcraft 3. Here you may find models ripped from World of Warcraft and other games/sources.

1. Reforged HD Models
2. Reforged HD Skins
3. Reforged HD Icons

We realize that making assets for Reforged can be very time consuming. Thusly we are slacking on the freehand/original requirement for Reforged textures e.g. recolors. In the past we demanded that textures must be atleast 75% freehand work and only allowed 25% recolor/copy-pasted edits. These policies have since been scrapped. Instead Skin recolours may be accepted if a skin's usefulness outweighs the fact that the skin is a recolor/copy-paste work. In this case, moderators will note that the texture doesn't fully adhere to the rules, but is approved due to it's usefulness/demand. Do note that the recolors must still be quite significant and be aesthetically pleasing to look at.

Moderator Review Badge

At the same time, people who take the time to create High Quality assets for our community should be rewarded. For this reason we are introducing new ways to show our appreciation: Director's Cut Badge and a High Quality Badge. Moderators will be able to reward high quality assets (both SD and HD) with these new badges. Addtionally, we will add the option for asset creators to add a Patreon link to their submitted resources. This link will be clearly visible and is entirely optional. More information on these changes will come later.

Badge preview (subject to change):

Restricted Status

Approved Status

High Quality Badge

Director's Cut Badge

Specific details and information on how to achieve this badge will come later.

Note: Ported Assets are ineligible to receive a HQ or DC badge.

1. Ported Models
2. Ported Skins
3. Ported Icons

We have refrained from hosting model rips of World of Warcraft in the past due to the fact that WOW models need to be optimized to work properly inside Warcraft 3. And it's far from all WOW model rips that work well enough to meet the requirements of Hive's standards. However after the release of Reforged, there was suddenly a huge demand for HD assets. But where to find them? Glad you asked.

There exists many sites around the web that host poorly optimized WOW models etc.
So we made a new section where people can upload WOW rips/ported assets. These ported assets are subject to moderation to make sure that they function properly inside Warcraft 3. Thusly there are rules and policies to adhere to when submitting a ported asset. Please review the updated Resource Submission Rules (Models, skins, icons, spells).

Also. Now that Reforged is out, we are slacking on the "must be optimized for WC3" as the number of polies for example can be very large and still fit in with WC3: Reforged.

We are also in a way letting the user be the judge of whether they can use the model rather than ourselves. We have a minimum requirement of course. As always, if the model has broken animations or in other ways does not work correctly, it will need fixing or be marked substandard.

To meet the incoming horde of ported assets head-on, we are looking for new Moderators to help review the ported assets and make sure they work correctly inside Warcraft 3.

Fair Use

As the rules were made compatible with this, we've made a distinction between the use of material from other WC3 authors versus game companies. We don't want to allow taking a model from someone here and sticking a hat on it. But we do want to take a model from a game and convert it. We are making optimistic use of the Fair Use clause of the copyright laws.