Bugs?:
Impaler - No melee attack animation?
Scorpion - start with 0 armor??? Weak start until upgraded compared to others
Organic mine - Has model of normal goblin mine, no explosion effect
Fire Scarabs have more life while burrowed?
Remove Alternate word from Enrage for Ruby Lord to remove him being burrowed
Heroes:
Ruby Lord:
Big power spike when ruby lord gets lvl 6, but not worth leveling to 6
because other heroes power spikes way earlier. Effective drain tank.
Scarab Lord:
Healing is nice, but underwhelming at level 1,
progress the healing and mana cost with levels.
Insane INT growth for a STR hero.
Battle Focus - no cooldown, no mana cost
Using math we get the following effect:
0.6 * 2.5 = 1.5 damage multiplier for the whole army
Seeing as Reavers have cleave they can decimate land armies (and will)
while under battle focus.
This gets insane when coupled with dark command because the damage multipliers
are big.
29-49 damage on reaver, so 39 is average.
39 * 1.3 (dark command) * 1.5 (battle focus) = 76 average damage
And they cleave for half of it, so pretty much doing full damage in AoE.
So you get almost double the damage dealt, for all units near the scarab lords.
Oh and he is healing them.
And summoning more of them.
A hero with an aoe 1.95x damage multiplier with summoning needs balancing,
and it's a hard thing to do since the damage increase actually multiplies.
Couple yourself with a night elf ally and you are looking at a:
1.25 (roar) * 1.3 (dark command) * 1.5 (focus) = 2.4375 damage multiplier
You get the idea of where im going with this.
Reinforcements
Has goblin factory in tooltip, available at level 1.
I would say that the chaos damage is a bit too much on the guards when you factor in the damage
multipliers Scarab Lord gets rolling.
Vizier:
The most random one of all, doesn't seem to fit much.
He strugles with identity of a DPS hero and a support hero.
Half of his skills suggest support (Summoning, Passive), and half of them suggest
damage dealing (AoE damage, Ultimate).
Sand Elementals trivialize clearings of camps, because they have
a ton of health and Taunt for some reason.
For a creatuer made of sand they for some reason have Heavy armor.
The flame orb spell is pretty straightforward, however there is 0 reason to
level it instead of the elemental.
It has an average damage range with mediocre cooldown and high mana cost.
The passive seems cool, if only the hero had a need for such high mana gains
or had a Attack Speed steroid to make it matter much.
Ultimate makes me wonder what kind of a role this hero is suposed to be,
he can take down outposts alone faster than the Ruby Lord but having an ultimate
based on illusions means any race can shut him down with a single dispell.
Units:
Melee Units:
Scorpions - 0 starting armor, subpar life and dps. Slightly stronger than scarabs
but same food cost and melee. Tough to keep them alive till they get upgraded.
By the time they become relevant they are outclassed by other units imo.
Reaver - Broken with Scarab Lord, lackluster without him. Lower health than
all of heavy unit counterparts along with subpar armor.
Ranged units:
Fire Scarab - Core early game unit imo, stays relevant during later ingame due
to having burrow.
Stalker - Really liked these units, however i feel like the 2nd passive
needs tonning down on duration. Big minus is the cost, and i don't see myself
spending so much resources on a unit that only annoys enemies.
Hive Guards - Heavy version of gargoyle. The ability needs a boost since
it is not enough to make Hive Guard a threat while in a duel.
Fact is that web will stomp this unit hard and make it generally a risky choice.
Impaler - Pretty nice unit, works well but feels bland for such a cool model.
Can be used as a tower of sort to defend the base.
Mana Eater - Everything about this unit seems powerfull (when researched fully).
Drain Magic was used on destroyer because of his negative mana regeneration.
However mana eaters can use this mass dispell with no cost frequently.
Spell immunity prevents quick dispatch of these units with abilities and
them being ranged doesn't help much.
Their mana burning seems kinda strong but the biggest problem i have with them
is that they have Spell Immunity as a fast ranged unit.
Spell Casters:
Venomancer - Corrupted tree can be targeted and destroyed way too fast. Feels like
a waste of mana. Decay seems balanced in all aspects, the drain could be boosted
while the duration could be lowered to make it more of a threat.
Symbiosis - This is where the things become interesting. Combined with
the Scarab Lord and Hive Guards spawning large group of units is a big balancing issue.
However paired without Scarab Lord the effect isn't that great.
Absolutelly broken combined with Scarab Lord + Reavers combo.
Corpse Harvester - Moving fountain, never used the bombs but the health regen
makes this unit a pretty great addition. Costs next to nothing to train,
but is suicidal vs undead. Didn't ever use the bombs since restoration synapsis
requires 200 mana of a 300 pool.
It joins the game way too late however.
Sand Witch - Oh boy. This caster puts a lot of others to shame. It has both
a defensive spell, and offensive AoE curse and a AoE crowd control spell.
However i have to point out that Curse from banshees is a single target spell
for a reason. Couple a sand witch with 3 reavers a scarab lord and 2-3 venomancers
and you have a show on your hand. Unless the enemies brought a lot of dispells
they don't really stand a chance with this combo.
Favorite strategy:
2xVenomancer + 3xReaver + Scarab lord + 1xSand witch + 3xHive Guards +1x Mana Eater:
Venomancers give a 1.2 damage multiplier (attack speed!!!) which then multiplies
with the existing 1.95 damage multiplier of Scarab Lord abilities for a
whooping 2.34x damage multiplier (or 134% increase if you will).
Reavers get a 13 armor (8 base + 5 buff) with 50% cleave and sand witches toss around
the enemies and blind them. Hive Guards are there for the air support and the
unit spawning combo with venomancers but they can be made into quite the dps machines
when the multipliers start rolling.
Mana Eater is essential to keep webs and other nasty buffs away. However 1 does the job.
Gameplay:
Memorize the Rally point when spawning an egg, attach it to the egg via HashTable, then when the unit spawns
order the Attack Move order to that point. Atm it's a hassle not being able to rally point the egg. Also drones seem to harvest wood too slow for my taste.
The burrow ability kicks in late imo for Scorpions and Fire Scarabs.