Direct Strike

[Mayday]

Been a fan since the start, can't wait to try out the official release!

 

[Wazzz]

Nice to see someone made a version of this in Warcraft 3

 

[Shar Dundred]

Edit: Approved!

Seems fine by me.
Please provide a credits list so I can approve it.

 

[mike rose]

Love playing this map, but unfortunately it seems that the host gets booted out everytime the game starts. This has happened with me both as the host and someone joining in. Approximately 10 games or so and every time the host is disconnecting and when I am host it says that I left the game. Happened 4 times for me.

 

[LazZ]

Love playing this map, but unfortunately it seems that the host gets booted out everytime the game starts. This has happened with me both as the host and someone joining in. Approximately 10 games or so and every time the host is disconnecting and when I am host it says that I left the game. Happened 4 times for me.

I'm aware, and yes it's very unfortunate. I'm going to release a version soon that disables all the custom UI elements, stats and skins, because that's what is causing the desyncs.

 

[mike rose]

Thanks for taking the time to update this game. I know a lot of people dont play it, but its a lot of fun and has big potential!

 

[Brikak]

Mellee Heroes die faster than Ranged, getting lesser XP.
Sometimes Abilities are used very late, especially bad at Mellee Heroes who just die first with full mana...

Great Map.

 

[micca]

There is a bug if someone leave during voting for the next round, the next round won't start.

 

[Mayday]

There is a bug if someone leave during voting for the next round, the next round won't start.

I don't think that's a bug, since maybe people don't wanna play unbalanced teams. But I do agree an option should be there for those who wanna keep playing.

 

[Frostflow]

really nice map indeed!

 

[Damage]

Keep it up Lazz!

 

[MrXembla]

hello guys, do u know if i have to make a save file for this mod? the progression doesn't save for me...( for skins units)

 

[rameques]

I have a question, how much does the strenght items increase your health, normally 25 hitpoints pr str lvl but had about 700 pv at 48 str does not add up.
Really good game by the way

 

[Damage]

You can just mouse over the Strength stat of a hero, and it will tell you this.

 

[rameques]

You can just mouse over the Strength stat of a hero, and it will tell you this.

ty

 

[Vunjo]

Dryad Strike is a pretty good map, it's usually fast-paced and very fun to play. I understand that most units are based of melee Wc3 (with exceptions where their abilities would not be useful, such as Far Sight) and, as far as I'm aware, even their attack damage and armor values are untouched, with only their attack speed and health modifier to bring a much faster bloodshed compared to the original melee. I think this is a good starting ground for balancing, as you avoid touching unnecessary variables, but I still have a couple of balance concerns I wanted to share.

As a disclaimer I do not claim to be a good melee player whatsoever, nor a great player at this map either, so take this comment with a grain of salt. So far I've only played 20+ games with random hosts on Bnet, with my winrates of 7-6 as Human, 3-1 as Orc and 4-1 as Undead and 0 games as disgusting dryad spamming Night Elves. I've mostly learned the map by playing Humans and tried a couple of very questionable builds, like building around Paladin since level 1 through items and what not (works okay-ish in late game, just don't rush items in early game, from my experience at least).

That being said the map's name is misleading and should be called Dryad Strike instead, due to the amount of NEs and them always placing lots of Dryads and usually winning to be honest. Whenever my allied players are NE, I tend to compare the amount of Dryads they've built to the amount of Dryads the enemy has built and the win/loss tends to be determined by this rather accurately. Without going further into the shitpost, since they're magic immune and have slow poison they essentially counter both casters and attacking units, on top of which they also have abolish magic. As far as I know there's a good reason why they've been in melee meta for a while too. I would seriously consider reducing their DPS output since they already fill the role of support via slow poison and abolish magic.

Another unit I have serious issues with is Lich and his Death and Decay at level 6. In retrospect, I believe I've mostly lost by trying out questionable builds, or when I play "good" builds where I build solely to counter the enemy team, there's not much to do against Dryad spam (NE) or Lich (UD) hitting level 6. That guy alone destroys most of my armies, and his power only tends to go up as Death and Decay has a solid AoE and as spell damage it ignores armor values, so upgrading armor will not help against this. It's almost impossible to build around this, even my best counter so far, Mountain King with Storm Bolt really depends on the AI. Even if MK focuses the Lich, a smart Undead player will either get Banshees with AMS or simply get the item that blocks spells cast on the hero. The Frost Nova also oneshots Footmen if I'm not mistaken, though I suppose as an Intelligence hero you can't really build items for them (since there's no cooldown reduction or amplified spell damage or anything of the sorts in melee wc3, and therefore in this map) so I guess it makes sense that it deals so much damage. Death and Decay on the other hand seems way too good without any counterplay that essentially wins late game.

These are the 2 top balance issues I have with the map. I can talk about other things, units being overpowered/underpowered but I don't think anything comes close to the two examples I gave above, mostly due to the lack of counterplay in many cases. Flying Machines seem way too weak as in melee wc3 they're balanced around 1 food cost AFAIK which is not an issue in this map, yet their poor stats carry over. Gryphons might be dealing too high DPS considering they AoE rather easily with their upgrade, and they're pretty cheap too, as they are in melee. That is until they encounter Dryads and ignore the front line which they're supposed to counter (Knights, Abominations, Taurens and Druids of the Claw respectively per race) and start focusing the ranged heroes attacking them, only to get baited into the Dryad trap and have their private parts wide opened which they did not sign up for. The Spellbreakers might be a bit too versatile, being rather useful in most scenarios even with limited amount of casters on the opposing team, etc. I mostly talk about Human units as I have most experience with them, so I can point out those that are too good or weak, as I try to be honest with myself and find strategies that are overperforming too. Being able to build around some Heroes seems fun, though I question the usefulness of some Intelligence heroes, such as Blood Mage or Archmage. Their Flame Strike and Blizzard respectively seem to be overall outperformed by Thunder Clap MK (considering the AoE slow which seriously counters Vamp Aura/Ghoul spam, cheap Human units like Knights/Footmen/Rifles, strongest Orc units like Tauren and their Pulverize, etc.) who then also scales really well as a front line and damage dealer in late game. In my experience, MK is probably a bit too good; being able to deal with Hero strats through Storm Bolt and Bash, dealing with ground units via Thunder Clap while also becoming a tanking powerhouse through Avatar and a couple of items. Orc's Tauren Chieftain does a similar job too, comparing to him MK looks fine but compared to other Human heroes I'd say he outperforms them overall.

The items are a really fun addition, though I think the Orbs need to be rebalanced. There's really no reason not to pick Orb of Corruption over anything else; Why slow/purge/poison a unit if you can simply kill it faster? Why gain +5 splash damage from Orb of Fire if you can get ~+25% DPS increase on single target, not just for your Hero but for other units too? The Orbs are rather expensive too, assuming Orb of Corruption gets nerfed, I'd say the orbs are never worth it unless you want to make a melee hero attack air units. Due to their high cost, I'd suggest buffing the other Orbs and potentially slightly nerfing Corruption in order to maintain balance.
It's good to see that Agility heroes were taken into account; you can't get as much Agility as you can get Strength from items. While I respect this careful approach, from my experience mostly Strength heroes dominate the arena as a result when built around; Dreadlord, Mountain King, Tauren Chieftain and Paladin alike. I have yet to see a scary Warden or Priestess of the Moon (though her Trueshot aura is amazing), as I've only seen decent Blademasters and Demon Hunters performing as your "expected", high DPS Agility heroes. The 4 mentioned heroes each have their really powerful abilities that make them so strong; Dreadlord gains 50% Life steal, MK has lots of CC and Avatar, TC has CC and revives himself, and a well equipped Paladin uses Divine Shield at ~15% health and then Life steals back up to ~70% health during that time, all while supporting allies through any and all of his other abilities.

All in all Dryad Strike is a really good map, I just wish I'd play against fewer Dryads and had more counterplay against them and Lich's Death and Decay. I think in general it would be cool to have an item or any other form of "neutral research", if that's something you ever plan to have, where we could grant spell damage reduction to our units, so that the spellcasting heroes have counterplay instead of being balanced around a spot without one.

 

[Eat_Bacon_Daily]

Hey man, just wanted to congratulate you on making such a great map. It's really a lot of fun and has a ton of re-playability. It's especially great that ladder players can recall their knowledge and immediately know how to counter certain builds. I especially love the UI and how the game auto-balances in uneven numbered teams. Great work all around. Here are some questions/criticisms I had:

-Tanks seems much weaker than their ladder counter-part, did you do this on purpose?

-Hyppogryphs and gyros seem too weak against air, even though they should specialize against it, never seem to have a reason to build any of these.

-I wish the camera settings saved between rounds

-Sometimes the AI is really frustrating, for example if I go Shadow Hunter first with serpent wards, he won't cast his spell until the enemy has a more sizeabale army, despite the fact that serpent wards is meant to be spammed, due to it's low cost and low cooldown.

Anyway, I'm a huge fan of your map! Good job!

 

[LazZ]

Dryad Strike is a pretty good map, it's usually fast-paced and very fun to play. I understand that most units are based of melee Wc3 (with exceptions where their abilities would not be useful, such as Far Sight) and, as far as I'm aware, even their attack damage and armor values are untouched, with only their attack speed and health modifier to bring a much faster bloodshed compared to the original melee. I think this is a good starting ground for balancing, as you avoid touching unnecessary variables, but I still have a couple of balance concerns I wanted to share.
...

Hey man, just wanted to congratulate you on making such a great map. It's really a lot of fun and has a ton of re-playability. It's especially great that ladder players can recall their knowledge and immediately know how to counter certain builds. I especially love the UI and how the game auto-balances in uneven numbered teams. Great work all around. Here are some questions/criticisms I had:
...

Thanks for playing, and thanks for taking the time to write these reviews! I begin to see the same issues you point out like the Dryads, MK, Lich, orbs, anti-air etc. and I agree all in all.
There are a lot of things to consider when balancing this sort of map, and I'll attempt fix this stuff in future versions. I don't expect to release a new version too soon though, since I'm in the midst of doing an overhaul of the cosmetic system and misc. stuff as well as rewriting the map in TypeScript.

 

[micca]

any release date on the new big update?

 

[LazZ]

any release date on the new big update?

It's probably a couple of months away at least.

 

[Standhaft]

5/5

Dope game.

Though it needs Garithos skin for paladins... LOL.

 

[Graetgames]

The map is great

i've played to in the past 3 months and it's the best.... even looks bloody grand on Reforged graphics and i've recorded a few videoes on this map to

can't wait for the future updates on this map

 

[Smiley5]

Hi guys

I have a question for a friend if he play this game so you got exp for your lvl for the race ,

after he finish the game and go to the main menu it reset all time the lvl ups is this a bug or what he can do

(sorry for the bad english)

thank you for comments

 

[LazZ]

Hi guys

I have a question for a friend if he play this game so you got exp for your lvl for the race ,

after he finish the game and go to the main menu it reset all time the lvl ups is this a bug or what he can do

(sorry for the bad english)

thank you for comments

If his Bnet tag contains any special symbols it fails to load his savecode.

 

[InSaNe_97]

AM does not use Tornado. No matter if Blizzard is enabled or not. When fixed, It should prioritize Tornado over Blizzard. My NE progress is level 5 with 0 matches. This bug is from the last version or so, a relatively new bug.

Mountain Giant has its resistant skin at 100% melee instead of "everything" else 50%, unbalanced, braindead, Many units deal minimum damage possible, miserable. I was always wondering why are they so hard to kill and now I discovered.

 

[Lich134]

NO NO NO NO NO NO
this shit all over starcraft 2 we cant let it spread its plague here too,no way
people play this and dont spend time on real good stuff like hero battles and rpgs
or anything good

 

[Standhaft]

NO NO NO NO NO NO
this shit all over starcraft 2 we cant let it spread its plague here too,no way
people play this and dont spend time on real good stuff like hero battles and rpgs
or anything good

Disliked.

 

[Lich134]

Disliked.

sad but true

 

[Standhaft]

sad but true

If it was true then people would play those other games.

People play Direct Strike because it is better.

 

[Lich134]

If it was true then people would play those other games.

People play Direct Strike because it is better.

i dont wana argue with your type,cuase it has no point,acutlly idk why i started this i got a clan for that and dont need randoms
anyway glhf

 

[Damage]

Mixed mode is based.
11/10

 

[Hybris95]

Love the map, been hosting it countless times now!
In 3.0.3 there is a bug, where one whole team can't upgrade goldmines, but has already unlocked everything, basically building tier 3 units from the get go.
EDIT: I also get randomly DC'ed out of the game without any issues on my side. Happens less then with the desync issue, but from time to time, also to others in my games.

 

[DrDrakoz]

ArkaTekK won a 1v3... No tanks this time! what a god

 

[dazaba3]

As soon as you start, the fun is cut short by idiots who raise up to 4 gold mines.
I hope you add a no gold mine mode (or maximum2) like castle fight.

 

[cooliecan]

This game is great. However on the mixed mode it's impossible to win without dispel against magic casters. Please consider adding a AOE dispel item that heroes can use like a wand.

 

[A]mun]

Pretty addicting really, if a little stale after some matches (default units, heroes, abilities and items).

 

[Villagerino]

One of my favorite maps, spent many hours playing it, one of the greatest strategic battlefields that can replace Castle Fight for me (played only old 3v3 version like a nerd in the best days of Warcraft). Thank you for developing the map! And I'm also happy to see my models here
I'd also like to notice that the skin system in this map is crazy good that you always want to take a look at its code with one eye @LazZ is it the latest open source map?

 

[Herohatcher]

I played Direct Strike for the first time yesterday on Bnet Europe. Had 5 matches and lost all of them. Thats what my review is based on. The Community is quite experienced, some matches ive been teached whats good and others people raged because i used units outside of the meta.

Design: Flawless. Good placement of Icons, easy to understand. Many custom Options, for an Example: You can project a grid onto your base, customize your player icon and adjust camera to heights above 3000.

Gameplay: Easy to get into, hard to master. Its quick and fun. You can counter enemy troops and alter your battle formation according to what you are likely facing.

Conclusion: One of the most outstanding projects out there. Also custom ranked play is incoorporated. Good job!