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.

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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

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.

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):

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.

Blizzard said:

August 19, 2020

Greetings Warcraft III: Reforged players!

In our last Developer Update, we shared details regarding our upcoming Ranked Play overhaul, which includes a new MMR based ranking and matchmaking system, an in-game leaderboard, and Ranked Seasons. We also mentioned that we would continue providing the community a look into the Warcraft III team’s development plan. For this month’s update, we want to dive into our next high priority feature currently in development: Player Profiles.


FEELING THE NOSTALGIA

As with the Ranked Play system, we want the Player Profile system to capture the feel of legacy Warcraft III while providing updates that enhance the experience. Therefore, many of the features included in the original system will be brought into Warcraft III: Reforged.

Work in Progress: Profile Screen


PLAYER PORTRAIT AND PERSONAL DETAILS

In legacy Warcraft III, you were able to see your Player Portrait icon and were given additional space to include information about yourself, providing you a way to customize your profile. For Reforged, we felt it was very important to maintain this. In the new Profile System, you will also be able to customize your player portrait and details. We have combined the original homepage and additional information sections into one personal details section, with a maximum character limit of 255.

Work in Progress: Personal Details Edit Screen


MATCH HISTORY

Along with the Personal Details section in your Player Profile, you will be able to view your match history in 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, FFA, and Custom Games. Dropdowns will be available in the profile screen for you to filter by game type. We will also provide seasonal match history, as well your all-time match history for you to browse through. On the bottom left of the profile screen, you’ll see your total wins, losses, and win percentage by race—similar to legacy Warcraft III.

Work in Progress: Profile Dropdowns

Work in Progress: 4v4 Match History Screen

For arranged 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4, you will be able to see the teams you are on, your teammates, MMR, wins, and leaderboard ranking. Clicking on each team will provide you the match history for that team.

Since our new Ranked System will be using MMR to determine ranking instead of the leveling system in legacy, you will now have your current MMR displayed in your profile for each race in 1v1 and your team MMR in each of the team-based game types.


MATCH HISTORY DETAILS

Work in Progress: View Details Screen

Another notable feature coming with the profile system overhaul is the ability to view the details of a previously played match. In your profile screen, you will be able to select a specific match and view the details of that match. Below is an example of what the match detail screen would look like.

Work in Progress: Match Details Screen

You will also be able to view your match details for each of your arranged team games as well.


LOOKING FORWARD

The Player Profile system will launch in the next major content patch alongside the Ranked System. We are still looking to release in the next few months and will provide another update as we get closer to launch. We look forward to seeing the community discuss the upcoming Player Profile feature, along the continual discussion of our Ranked Play feature.

- The Warcraft III Team