Art of Defending: Versus v1.32

[Moderator]

00:40, 29th Nov 2009
ap0calypse: Approved

 

[hadezOwn]

V1.0
- Increased prep time between waves by 30 seconds
- Weapon and Armor upgrades now only take 1 second with a 1 second increment
- All other upgrades now take only 5 seconds (Tiering time is unchanged)
- Decreased Longevity gold increment to 75 gold
- Longevity is applied to various special units (Skeleton Warriors, Mages, Destroyers, etc.)
- Reduced the cost of Shipping Resources to 50 gold and 50 lumber
- Reduced damages on Waves: 1, 7, 9, 11
- General hero ability improvements

 

[Vengeancekael]

Some screenshots would be nice : - )

 

[hadezOwn]

Ah good idea, added 6 screenies.

 

[Karaterat]

looks very interesting, seems a bit more advanced then normal AoD's. i have to try this out

 

[Vengeancekael]

woah that was a fast description change^^The game looks good, but the terrain is.....average.

 

[hadezOwn]

I just noticed a typo on the token menu. The token cost for Heal all units & buildings should be "-4" not "-3". The fix will be in my later update.

 

[Anachron]

I played this map a few times before. Has been updated a lot. Its really fun.

 

[hadezOwn]

V1.1
- Unit build times slashed in HALF
- Waves 12 and 15 and on nerfed

- Decreased resource cost of Ancient Protectors to: 120 gold, 60 wood
- Decreased Longevity gold increment to 25 gold and wood inc to 10
- Increased max research level of Resource Shipping to 20

- Added Hero Mask item (+300 Hp), 800 gold
- Increased cost of Blood Rapier from 8000 to 10,000 gold
- Decreased cost of Fire Cloak from 2800 to 2400 gold
- Decreased cost of Angel Bow from 4000 to 3500 gold
- Decreased cost of Elephant Ring from 800 to 650 gold
- Decreased cost of Ankh from 800 to 700 gold
- Rejuvination Potion now has 2 charges

View descrip for full changelog

 

[Anachron]

Oh hey hadezown!

I forgot to tell you:
Enable auto balanace. The creeps do not spawn for players that are not living.

 

[krisserz]

I think description would be better, if you move the changelog from beginning ( for example at the ending), and hide it.

 

[hadezOwn]

Hey, I was doing that initially but I had spawn rate issues and I decided to do away with it for now. I'll work out auto balancing better in the next version.

^ Good idea, I'll hide the changelog

 

[X-OMG-X]

Looks like a really cool map and seems like its much more advanced than the original Art of defence maps. I like that you can choose different game modes, and i have some ideas for new modes.

No towers - standard gameplay, but players are unable to build defensive towers.
Battle mode - the two teams is fighting against eachother, but there will sometimes spawn creeps around the map when playing.

 

[hadezOwn]

Updated to 1.2 view the changelog for details.
Thanks for the suggestions and i'm still considering some more.

 

[Vengeancekael]

I remember playing this with Anachron, alot of fun

 

[hadezOwn]

Thank you

 

[-Kobas-]

Very good map, multiboard is awesome
But there was 10000 monsters and i play only for few minutes,
so i hope that you cleaned all memory leaks because it can lags a lot

Ofc terrain can be better But it is acceptable for this kind of map

 

[Anachron]

A bit imbalanced
also create an auto balance mode please.

 

[hadezOwn]

I guess there's no way around it by using less hp %

Next version i'll lessen spawn numbers and balance numbers for less players.

 

[oldmilk]

I think you need to balance the "balance numbers for less players" more. I tried 1 player, and my friends did too. We all couldn't get past level 2, since level 1 raped us, and if we survived, we didn't have enough time to fully rebuild and recooperate, and then level 2 would come and finish us off. (talking about 1 player. We played 1 at a time.)

Balance:
1)AoE nukes needs better scaling for early-mid game effectiveness.
2)Non-ulti Channeling Spells(Blizzard, Rain of Fire,etc) should not be channeling and like 1st suggestion, better scaling for early-mid game effectiveness.
3)AoE Damage Spells(Rain of Fire, Flame Strike, etc) should be made so that it does not damage ally units and buildings, because of the extreme clutter, and every level has melee units, its hard not to hit your own stuff for heavy damage.
4)Worker units might be edited to take up 0 food. I'm kinda iffy on this one.
5)Label shop items(Custom items AND regular shop items) with Orb Effect if the ability they give is an orb effect. I don't even know if your lifesteal can stack with poison orb.
6)Make all heroes able to attack both air and ground (in relation with previous suggestion), because ground-only targetting heroes must have an orb from the regular shop to hit them. The orbs from the regular shop is an orb effect, and they are pretty weak. (ie: fire orb, shitty splash damage(exact, not %)).
7)Give the Base Building an upgrades that upgrade its max hp and armor, because by mid game, about 12 creeps can take down your base building very fast. Air units that take the side paths tend to skip your forces and aim for the workers and base building.

I'm a little not totally up for some of these changes, as they might cause the aim of the game and/or strategy to stray away from what you wanted. You could experiment with them yourself and see if they're okay, but the balance suggestions I gave you that I'm positively sure should be implemented are 1,2,3,and 5.

 

[hadezOwn]

Thank you finally some decent feedback.
I've been workin on the newest version since yesterday and I think I covered most of the main issues here. Some things I didn't think about that you mentioned are team splash damage and orb effects.

The life steal on the items do not stack with race shop orbs.

 

[oldmilk]

Hope you get those fixed. I just played some more, found more fixes that are needed:

1) Titan's Repair skill says it repairs buildings and units, but can only target organic units, so I couldn't repair buildings. Change targetting to allow structures.
2) Air units would fly to the side and around my forces and attack my base, killing all my workers and then they started killing the base building.
3) Building repair time from the workers are SUPER slow. maybe divide repair time number by half or by 3?

I could finally get to the gnoll/harpy level. But i used warpten for awhile to speed up my Town hall ->Keep upgrade. Harpies flew around my towers and killed all peasants. I knew I had lost.

Label the items that give lifesteal and the race orbs with that in their tooltip. That "Orb Effects Do Not Stack". I have another question. Does the lifesteal from the custom items stack with the lifesteal of the other custom items?

 

[hadezOwn]

I already took care of 1 and 2. Don't worry too much about 3, I did alot of damage balancing and stuff you wont have as much trouble repairing. The lifesteal from Training Gear 1 & 2 and Blood Rapier do not stack. There will be only 1 life steal item in the update since I'm changing a few stats.

And in the update enemies wont directly attack the side of your base anymore.

 

[oldmilk]

the attaack side thing was because they'd go to the sides to attack other players. But since there are no other players...yeah. Its fine as is if its full team. But you should fix the pathing AI for less players.

 

[hadezOwn]

Fewf, *Wipes away the sweat*, there we go v1.3, view changelog for details.



UGH if your mini map says "v1.13" its the wrong 1, sry loaded wrong version fixed now

 

[oldmilk]

heh. I didn't like a lot of the item changes. The only one I 100% liked was the blood sword change. hey, considering humans rely on towers a lot,(footmen suck ass), I don't think the tower damage change you did should have been done. Don't take anything I say right now seriously. I haven't tried the new version yet. I'll see soon. These are just my assumptions before I play.

 

[hadezOwn]

I know it hurts but i had to
Heros could solo every wave if I didn't nerf them, the games more about making good unit combinations not have a stacked hero. Sry mate

 

[oldmilk]

i beat the game. too easily. the hardest wave i would say was level 9 or 10, the one with the 2000 hp uhh...skele grunt or some undead unit? You could add a difficulty selection, and make the default mode you have now as Easy. Or just buff the number of units by 4 (2 each type for 2 type levels). or maybe 6 per level... Anyways. I bring more balance Suggestions:

1) On the waves with two unit types, when I killed the type 1 units, the timer for the next level would start even if type 2 units were still alive. This may or may not work the other way around (type 2 killed first)
2) Unit attacks that splash hurt themselves. You fixed this for SOME spells only too. Siege splash attacks and cannon towers hurt myself.
3) Pit Lord's Rain of Fire still hurts my units. You should go over the AoE spells yourself you know. I can't list every single one.
4) Channeling spells are still channeling? If you don't know how to fix this, it's simply making the spell spawn a dummy unit in front of your hero(or center of AoE? not sure) that channels the spell for the hero. Or if you feel this makes the skill too strong, fine with me.
5) Some spells are shitty at some parts of the game. The AoE channels (Blizzard, Rain of Fire) Could use a 10 damage buff or something.
6) Summons should be stronger. Maybe a fast attack speed for Hawk(also, add an attack for level 1 hawk), a cleave attack for bear, a bit more damage on quillbeast, a bounce attack and/or fast attack on Water Elementals, and more hp for Firespawns.
7) I like the hero exclusive items. Keep adding more . I have an idea for one, Roshan's rock, which is for Titan, and it gives his ulti more AoE, and gives him 20 bonus armor for when it's active.

I also want to add that, and i mentioned this before, when I give balance suggestions to units' abilities or effects, you should search for more extremely similar abilities or effects that need the same fix than the examples I give you.

 

[hadezOwn]

Yes, setting difficulty is the next thing the game needs.

1) Not sure what you mean here, the timer auto starts the countdown for the next wave a few seconds after the wave begins, it does not matter if there are enemies alive or not (except for last round of course)
2) I guess I missed canon attacks (i honestly thought i fixed that). I'll look over splash dmging units.
3) Ok thanks
4) Yea I can make them non channeling.
5 & 6) Ok noted. I was really focusing on other aspects of the game before so now I'll focus more on abilities.
7) I'll be sure to add more and ill give that to Titan since you're being so helpful

 

[oldmilk]

lol if you think of a better effect for titan then its ok. You might make the item give titan a bonus hp regen aura that affects buildings +4hp per second . Not too many effects though it'd be too imba.

Name of Titan's item(if you think of a better one, thats great)
Possible Effects:
1) Ulti has more AoE, 20 bonus armor Aura that affects heroes, allied units, and structures that activates when you activate the ulti.
2) Ulti has more AoE, permenant +4 hp per second regeneration Aura that affects heroes, units and structures.

Chooose.

Also a note on siege/cannon/splash attacks. For the ranged ones, like catapult, mortar team, cannon tower, demolisher, and other ranged siege units, if you think it's not too imbalanced, you could change the projectile type to make it follow the target like regular projectiles(ie: archer arrows) so they are more effective.

More balance suggestions:
1) Change all tower structures' armor type to Fortified except the orc burrow(it has an upgrade for that). Scout tower, guard tower, magic tower, watch tower....other towers possibly too. Check them all. Some have heavy armor. If you think it's ok, change the type to Fortified.

 

[hadezOwn]

"permenant +4 hp per second regeneration Aura that affects heroes, units and structures"

oo I like an idea long those lines

 

[oldmilk]

because well, in the description of the Titan, you said it was adept at repairing structures and stuff.

 

[oldmilk]

I hope you're going through all the races for fixes and not just fixing the ones i listed as examples. I'll help you out just on summons though. I just started trying orc.

1) Balance Tauren Chieftan's shockwave damage from 75/125/325 to 125/225/325.
2) Balance Tauren Chieftan's War Stomp damage from 25/50/125 to 25/75/125.
3) Change Tauren Chieftan's Endurance Aura from MS 10/20/30% AS 5/10/15% to MS 5/10/15% AS 10/20/30%.
4) Reduce Grunt's gold cost from 200 to 140.
5) You should have spotted this from an earlier suggestion, but Orc Watch towers, just like human towers, need their armor type changed from Heavy to Fortified.
6) Change Voodoo Lounge's Healing Slave item to become Combat Consumable. I'm kinda iffy on this one, because regen is low, and not a lot of time to regenerate anyway. Orc is a tankish race.
7) Reduce Shadow Hunter's Hex cooldown to 5 seconds.
8) Increase Shadow Hunter's Healing Wave Heal to 150/250/600. Increase Bounce amount to 5/7/9.
9) Change Shadow Hunter's Big Bad Voodoo to non-channeling and instead of making allied units invulnerable, make the ultimate place a ward that gives 10000 Armor and Magic Immunity to allied units in the same AoE as the old ulti, and have bonus affect the Shadow Hunter. Reduce the duration from 30 seconds to 25 seconds.
10) Make Shadow Hunter's primary attribute Intelligence. Decrease Base Agility by 2 and Increase base Intelligence by 3.
11) Rescale Blademaster's Wind Walk bonus damage to 150/300/450.
12) Rescale Blademaster's Critical Strike to have a 15/20/25% chance to activate.
13) Increase the damage of Blademaster's bladestorm from 110 damager per second to 200 damage per second.
14) Rescale Far Seer's chain lightning to deal 125/225/325 damage and bounce 5/7/9 times.
15) Rescale Far Seer's Haste Runes to give 10/30/50% bonus attack speed.
16) Allow Far Seer's Earthquake to not hurt ally units(if it currently does), and deal 150 damage per second.


Now to help you out on balancing summons.
17) Shadow Hunter's Serpent Wards - Summon 3/4/5 Serpent Wards at once, buff their hp to 300/550/800 hp. Increase damage to 14-16/26-30/48-54. Give them a 100 AoE 100% damage Splash attack at level 3, that of course, does not hurt yourself.
18) Blademaster's Mirror Images - Make Blademaster's Mirror Images take 150% of original damage and deal 20% of original's damage.
19) Far Seer's Spirit Wolves - Increase HP of wolves from 200/300/400 to 400/650/850. Increase damage to 17-20/28-34/50-58. Eliminate their ability to turn invisible at level 3. Replace it with a 25% Lifesteal attack, a passive ability called Vampiric Attack. It is not an aura.
20) Dark Ranger(Tavern)'s Black Arrow Skeletons - Increase hp of skeletons to 500/550/600. Increase damage of skeletons to 20-23/30-34/40-45. Also, increase the bonus damage given to Dark Ranger with Black Arrows to +8/+15/+45.

Item Ideas:
21) Replace the Rejuvination Potion with an item that gives +6 to all stats, and gives Melee Heroes a 35% 200 AoE cleave that hits in a Circular AoE in front of the hero. Suggested price: 4000 gold. If implemented, move the Blood Sword into the Rejuvination Potion's spot and put the new item into the old Blood Sword's spot. You could also make a "Legendary Consumables Shop" and put the Rejuvination potion and the Ankh of Reincarnation there.
22) Cairne's Ancient Halberd - Reduces the Tauren Chieftain's Reincarnation cooldown to 150 seconds. When the Tauren Chieftain dies, he deals 175 damage in a 500 AoE to enemies. When he revives with Reincarnation, he deals 150 damage in a 500 AoE to enemies. Passively gives the Tauren Chieftain +10 to strength, 150 bonus mana, and +10 HP regen. For the death damage and revive damage, make the animation just like Druid of the Claw's Roar.
23) Yurnero's Legendary Sword - Gives the Blademaster 1000 armor when Bladestorm is activated and passively gives 40% bonus attack speed.

Fixes:
24) I found out that Sylvana's Poison doesn't work properly. I charmed a unit with the Dark Ranger equiped with Sylvana's Poison. It showed that the damage dealt was the same. Check all Hero Exclusive Items and make sure they work. Also, I was able to buy hero exclusive items that my hero was not compatible with. Please make a system that completely prevents me from doing this.

Remember: It's your choice whether these are good ideas or not and whether these should be implemented.

 

[hadezOwn]

Thanks very much dude.
It's exam time for me so I'll have to wait before getting into this.

 

[oldmilk]

awesome stuff. I'll try the new version.

POST EDITTED

That was a nice test. Anyway, heres a reminder of our balance ideas we thought up during the game.
1) Lower Speed time of Hero HP/MP upgrade to match the Hero Damage upgrade.
2) Fix Spawn separation involving waves with 2 Types of units.
3) Label Blood Rapier tooltip with Cleave percentage.
That's all I remember. if there were others and you remember them, that'd be great.

While you were away after the game, I did some testing myself.
4) Boost Tauren Chieftan's Warstomp AoE by 100.
5) Change statistics of Troll Beserker's Beserk ability from 50% extra damage taken 50% extra attack speed to 40% extra damage taken 75% extra attack speed. The current ability technically has no real boost, since you take 1.5x damage and increase DPS by 1.5x.
6) Fix tooltips of changed summon abilities to match changes of v1.31. (ei: Beastmaster's hawk's never said how many hawks it would spawn.)
7) Increase damage of Fire Lord's lava spawns by a bit. Increase Fire Lord's base attack speed by a bit. He needs a buff of some sort. He has a single target silence, a summon that isn't that great until your summons have survived in battle long enough, and a passive that depends on his Damage output to effectively release explosions. His ulti is as strong as other heroes.

Ideas for Hero-exclusive items(Make a 2nd shop if needed):
8) Rexxar's Axes of Moral - Increases nearby ally and your own summons(and/or units?) attack damage by 100% when Stampede is casted.

 

[hadezOwn]

Thanks I didn't know u edited ur post

Firelords spawns dmg are fine b/c u can have like 9 of them eventually and they are pretty good at taking dmg instead of your army. Ill look into the others.

 

[oldmilk]

ok. when you're done, leave me a response here.

 

[rhyjames187]

You have a good idea and look good.
Thanks for sharing and of-course for making!