goblin race ideas (un-serious discussion)

[Bleeq]

I didn't know where to post this, so if mods want to move it, go ahead. I basically just wanted somewhere to discuss some goblin custom race ideas publicly between anyone, without spamming up other pages.

Anyway, @Scias I'm interested what Goblin stuff you've come up with so far?

I'll do a big dump of my half-arsed ideas later

I found this which is kinda interesting, I don't recognise all the models: My Goblin Race Idea?

 

[Bleeq]

I had one strategy / playstyle thought-out for them, basically longer range siege then any other race by using a weaker version of Mortar teams but with an upgrade that gives them massive range advantage (like +600 over the Mortar teams), and then having ways of revealing the map either through building ability (like Arcane Tower has) or by pre-planting Sentry Wards with a sneaky Hero (since I'm just replacing Orcs I figured I can reuse some of the orc abilities).

Another idea was with the mechanical units, having the Mechanic as a repair guy you bring along with your army and giving him an upgrade to heal mechanic units in AOE. The mechanical units are also pretty good at siege, and there's Goblin Shredders that go well with this build, I gave them a upgrade that changes their armor type to Fortified.

The most lackluster part is the spellcasters, since I ran out of ideas on how to tie them up with these concepts plus I'm unable to make any custom autocast abilities, so the casters I made are pretty annoying to use. (Hm, writing this, maybe Sage's could have a Oracle ability (Far Sight) that reveals area of the map making them combo with the artilery)

And also the Capitalist hero I set up the ability for him to sell lumber for gold (this would scale late game when you have shredders making Goblins really strong resource race), but it's hard to balance + I don't know how to give this ability a cooldown, seems to need a trigger since simply setting a cooldown doesn't work.

From: BTNGoblinWorker


I never thought of that Artillery thing for Goblins, but it's funnily enough REALLY similar to my idea for reworking the PotM.

Spoiler: Priestess of The Moon:

• Owl stops being invulnerable, becomes ethereal instead (so you can counter it with magic and dispels)
  • probably bonus: when you attach it to a unit (it is following/patrolling on them) it gives a small hp and mana regen.
  • That way it has multiple uses.
• Fire arrows become Moonfire
  • Similar to WoW version, but with global range across the entire map. This lets it synergise with the owl, so you can blast people on the other side of the map.
  • has a small cooldown so you can spam like in Wow, but most of the damage would be dot, so it is inefficient to spam.
  • efficient use would let you steal creeps (like blademaster or DK) or kill off retreating units.
• Trueshot Aura, unchanged but probably nerfed a bit
  • She is almost a useable hero just because of this aura, so if her other abilities weren't crappy she would probably be overpowered.
• StarFall, Unchanged.

This would give you 3 different types of builds, too:

1. Owl + Moonfire, for max artillery, regen your own mana with an owl, use some others to scout and nuke things from miles away
2. Moonfire + Aura, max combat mode/dps mode
3. Owl + Aura, support priest style that hangs back. use owls to scout and put them on your tanking units to make them last longer against creeps and stuff.

I also thought about making half or more of their units mechanical, the repairers would be either workers (also mechanical lol) or their caster would be a "tech priest" who repairs things for free, with a servo arm.

We're thinking the same thing with the shredders and selling wood late game. I would just make it a late-game tech though.

Venture Co. Shipment: 1) Ship your lumber to the 'Open' Market 2) ????? 3) Profit!
And to balance quite a few economic abilities and buffs their stuff would just cost more most of the time. Or their units are just kind of flimsy etc. I think making shredders fortified might be op tho, lots of races have trouble with siege tanks for example.

My ideas for casters:

Tech Priest (dude with servo arm)

• Restructure
  • just repairs mechanical things, but for free. Maybe also can auto-cast "Overtime" to repair much faster for mana. gotta spend mana on something, after all.
• Arcana Mechana
  • Area dispel like normal priest, but the added gimmick is it also damages ALL mechanical units in the area, so double edged sword.
  • lucky he can repair your guys back, though.
  • Makes goblins really effective against other mechanicals.
  • Could make Goblin vs Goblin kinda weird lol
• Landmine
  • obvious but could be good. And gives goblins something that is countered by detection.
  • does damage and also slows enemies in the blast.
  • would need either big nerf against buildings or doesn't hurt them at all (this was OP in RoC)

Rockette (chick with business suit and big rocket on her back)

• Disinformation
  • basically wand of illusion with a cooldown
  • Could be interesting to use it with sappers as a decoy?
• Blast Off
  • Rockette becomes a flying unit, like wind druid, but can't use her other spells in this form.
  • She gets a new spell while flying: Afterburner, which moves very quickly to a point leaving fire underneath.
  • This is kinda my allusion to Rocketeers in Red Alert 2 (I can gooo anywhere!)
• Public Relations
  • "Subdues an enemy with an entertaining distraction"
  • This is the goblin version of Hard CC (polymorph, whirlwind, cripple)
  • You summon something entertaining (guitar arthas/dancing night elf) which channels a stun at the target. To release them you kill or dispel this summon.
  • probably OP if can target heros, would it still be OP if the distraction took the same damage as the target? Or even more?
  • I might steal this for my kobolds with a different name.

 

[Scias]

I mostly try to create things with limitations of editing existing abilities and not being able to make custom triggers / abilities myself, so my brainstorming was focused on such limitations, but here I'll write some extra ideas that I didn't even bother trying to pull off.

I'll start off with a idea I had for the main building, the Goblin Outpost, having a couple of "tied up" zeppelins floating at the edges of the building for sake of protecting Goblin Workers (like Burrow mechanic but doesn't attack, can load up to 6 workers, and is just a repair-able building that can only be attacked by ranged units). The Outpost could spawn +1 Zeppelin with each tier upgrade, and maybe there could be a upgrade for the Zeppelins to untie and fly freely.

Lackey

Basic worker unit. I made them a bit faster then Peons, less health, less damage but quicker attacks.

Goblin Clubber

Made these as the weakest warrior unit, I made them weaker then a Footman but faster production rate, and gave them ability to Bash (5% chance), the ability requires a Upgrade, which requires the Lumber storage building, together it's pretty expensive tech for early on, but once you have the research they can beat a Footman in 1v1 fight.

Goblin Gunner

Made this a weaker version of Rifleman, wasn't sure about this one, since with him + Goblin Clubber the tier1 looks a lot like re-skin of Humans. And there wasn't much use for them as a strategy in the way I made them. Was considering giving them ability to plant mines, requiring a upgrade, but from my experience mines work kind of wonky.

Goblin Sage

Goblin's caster unit, they would have 3 abilities like typical casters, the ideas I had were:

• Critter Scout - Tier 1 spell, basically Mechanical critter (I was thinking it would be cool if it was always sheeps, since the character looks like Sheepherd)
• Far Sight - Tier 2 Reveals area of the map
• Healing Wave - Tier 3 Weak version of Shadow Hunter's healing wave.

(a issue here is that none of the abilities are auto-cast, and spell casters usually have auto-cast abilities)

Goblin Warlock

Another caster unit, I also made it really lackluster with the abilities.. I was thinking what kind of abilities fit Warlock

• Warlocks Flame - Tier 1 ability, a passive that makes each attack set units on fire, since I made them attack using fire ball missile
• Ray of Disruption - Tier 2 ability, I figured this is a new way to dispel that wasn't used for any races and fits the theme of the character, but it's pretty difficult to use

For tier 3 Ability I was playing around with Drain Life, Animate Dead (1 unit) and Mana Burn..

• Drain Life - felt like it would combo well with Goblin Sage's Healing Wave, but both of these abilities being cast by hotkey is just really terrible for use, especially on weak unarmored low health caster units, since it takes long to build up the combo and Chimeras and Frostwyrms just 2-shot these guys, plus Drain life is so easily countered with enemies just simply running away to cancel it.
• Animate Dead - the idea was from Warcraft 2, but it felt too weak.
• Mana Burn - maybe would be better if it was something like Faerie Dragon's ability, but burning Mana each time a unit casts a spell.

(notice again, no auto-cast abilities, really awful for gameplay)

Goblin Mechanic

A semi-tanky unit that has less costly single target repair ability and an AOE repair that requires a upgrade. Stats similar to Spell Breaker.

Goblin Cannonbearer

One of the reasons I started working on this race, I had the idea for these characters having massive artillery range advantage over any other race.
I based them off of Mortar Teams, but giving them faster movement and attack speed, less hitpoints, and 29-37 attack damage compared to Mortars 52-64, however they benefit greatly from a +600 range Upgrade, and have 100 range above Mortars to begin with. The idea is to combo these with vision in order to siege enemy bases from really mass-range.

Goblin Sniper

A tier 2 unit, longer range and slightly stronger version of Human's Rifleman, with tier 3 Upgrade giving them ability to turn Invisible for short duration (used to escape / avoid focus). These would be good for anti-air and protecting the Cannonbearers.

Steamroller

Tier 2 unit, it's like Steam engine but slightly weaker, more mobile, and attacks land units. I was playing with the idea of making it shoot from both cannons that the model has as an upgrade, Double Barrel Boom, but I couldn't quite make it work right. It also needs some kind of way to make the steamrollers spikes damage melee units, with the best of my ability I gave it Spiked Carapace.

Gobbocopter

Tier 3 Flying unit, using the Goblin Remote Airplane model, I made it the main air unit for Goblins, was thinking of giving them some kind of a bomb-drop ability since they are quite bare without anything, compared to Grpyhon riders - Storm hammers, Frost Wyrms - Freezing Breath, Wind Riders - Envenomed Spears, Chimera - Corrosive Breath. Something like Burning Oil could be good.

Kamikrazee

Tier 2 Flying unit, basically a Batrider reskin since I removed orc race, and this model is ideal for a "Final Boom" type of ability, suiciding into enemy air. Goblins anti air unit.

Goblin Shredder

Tier 3 Ground unit, can collect lumber, and since original Goblin Shredder unit is really weak, I gave it a expensive upgrade Fortified Iron, turning it's armor type from Heavy to Fortified.

Hero:
Boomchemist

The idea was to have a hero who would provide vision for the artillery and also have some siege and CC utility.
Abilities:

• Sentry Ward - Hero version of the ability, can work comboed with Cannonbearers and Snipers range, using Boomchemist to pre-plant the sight wards for your artillery to siege.
• Bottles of Boom - Hero version of Burning Oil ability that doesn't damage friendly units.
• Cyclone in a Bottle - A potion that is Hero version of Cyclone ability, with a missile, basically used as a CC like Shadow Hunter's Hex
• Frogificator - A potion that contains Doom ability but it turns the unit into a Frog and has shorter cooldown (works well along with Transmute when both Alchemist and Boomchemist get to lv6)

Hero:
Capitalist

An idea for a Hero that would give the Goblins a resource advantage, but is very weak in combat, and combos well with Goblin Shredders (tier3 unit) in late game.

Abilities:

• Extortion - Pillage that works both on units and buildings. With triggering it could be reworked and made into a Transmute-like ability that doesn't kill a unit but just gives percentage of the resources used to build it.
• The Great Lumber Deal - Ability to sell Lumber for gold, since in late game you'd have shredders and mass amount of lumber you could use this ability to convert it to gold making your economy very strong.
• Shoe Polish - Nothing too creative here, boosts hero's movement speed for x duration, just thought the hero could use some kind of a movement speed boost to play around with when fleeing from enemies and liked how it fits the characters theme
• Peace Treaty - Level 6 ability, I based this off of Silence, preventing all units and buildings on the map from attacking for x duration.

For other two heroes I used the Tinker and Alchemist.


I also had some ideas of mixing in Ogres with the Goblins, like Humans have some Bloodelf units, Orcs have Trolls and Taurens, and there is already Goblin Alchemist Hero.. I made the alternative version of the race with Beastmaster ogre reskin, as the 4th fully Ogre Hero (2 Goblins, a Goblin + Ogre (Alchemist) and a Ogre) But I didn't like any of the strategical combinations, felt like you either go Goblins or Ogres, the units didn't mix together well.

Also made the Shop sell 3 Charge Clockwerk Goblin summons, in a Clockwerk Assembly Kit, helps early creeping and avoiding taking damage like Undead's Rod of Necromancy.


Edit:
Btw, imagine a Campaign that starts off with Goblins and Gnomes competing in technology while fighting off endless swarms of undeads, neither caring where the hordes of undeads are coming from, but rather competing which faction gets more kills on the skeletons, having some facilities that have counters for this (possibly on both ends being skewed to favorite their own faction). Until someone actually smart shows up like Antonidas or he sends Jaina, and then Goblins and Gnomes start working together to put an actual end to the scourge.

 

[Scias]

I never thought of that Artillery thing for Goblins, but it's funnily enough REALLY similar to my idea for reworking the PotM.

I think this is hard to balance, this kind of Hero early on could either be too OP or too UP, imagine someone attacking your workers without you being able to detect them, if you play non-aggressive early on you'll suffer, but if you play aggressive the player using this PotM strategy will definitely be the one suffering, since his Hero has to be weak. Also imagine the creep abuse haha

I also thought about making half or more of their units mechanical, the repairers would be either workers (also mechanical lol) or their caster would be a "tech priest" who repairs things for free, with a servo arm.

We're thinking the same thing with the shredders and selling wood late game. I would just make it a late-game tech though.

Venture Co. Shipment: 1) Ship your lumber to the 'Open' Market 2) ????? 3) Profit!
And to balance quite a few economic abilities and buffs their stuff would just cost more most of the time. Or their units are just kind of flimsy etc. I think making shredders fortified might be op tho, lots of races have trouble with siege tanks for example.

It would be cool if the Tech Priest (which is very similar to the Mechanic from my version) would have a welding effect when single target repairing.

Yeah I also upped the prices quite a bit and made the upgrades costly to maintain balance with the economic advantages of Goblins, but at some point there are stalemates where the resources just skyrocket. I guess the way to fix this is utilizing the weakness of mechanical units not having hp regeneration, and making repairs cost resources, even the AOE repair of the Mechanic unit in my concept would need to cost gold and lumber instead of mana.

You're right about Fortified armor being pretty strong/OP, as a measure to weaken it I reduced Shredders hp to 525, and it still survives with 40-50hp when fighting a Tauren, and I'm not sure if that's fine balance considering the Tauren didn't have Pulverize + Spirit walkers can revive Taurens and Taurens can benefit from Bloodlust, but also Mechanic can heal Shredders.

Tech Priest (dude with servo arm)

• Restructure
  • just repairs mechanical things, but for free. Maybe also can auto-cast "Overtime" to repair much faster for mana. gotta spend mana on something, after all.
• Arcana Mechana
  • Area dispel like normal priest, but the added gimmick is it also damages ALL mechanical units in the area, so double edged sword.
  • lucky he can repair your guys back, though.
  • Makes goblins really effective against other mechanicals.
  • Could make Goblin vs Goblin kinda weird lol
• Landmine
  • obvious but could be good. And gives goblins something that is countered by detection.
  • does damage and also slows enemies in the blast.
  • would need either big nerf against buildings or doesn't hurt them at all (this was OP in RoC)

I like the idea overall, the dispel is pretty interesting, could be named with electricity in mind, something like Super Charge, since Purge is also electric and it dispels. And would make sense why it messes with the mechanical units. I don't know if Landmine fits with this unit though, since it sounds more like a supportive unit, something to detect landmines would make more sense for it's abilities.

I made a similar theme dispel before on a Mecha Gnome hero, the idea was using Destroyer's dispel ability and turning it into mana for the Hero, and then the Hero having Mana Shield ultimate, which made a really good combo for tanking.

Spoiler

Rockette (chick with business suit and big rocket on her back)

• Disinformation
  • basically wand of illusion with a cooldown
  • Could be interesting to use it with sappers as a decoy?
• Blast Off
  • Rockette becomes a flying unit, like wind druid, but can't use her other spells in this form.
  • She gets a new spell while flying: Afterburner, which moves very quickly to a point leaving fire underneath.
  • This is kinda my allusion to Rocketeers in Red Alert 2 (I can gooo anywhere!)
• Public Relations
  • "Subdues an enemy with an entertaining distraction"
  • This is the goblin version of Hard CC (polymorph, whirlwind, cripple)
  • You summon something entertaining (guitar arthas/dancing night elf) which channels a stun at the target. To release them you kill or dispel this summon.
  • probably OP if can target heros, would it still be OP if the distraction took the same damage as the target? Or even more?
  • I might steal this for my kobolds with a different name.

I like the idea of decoy and especially it's use along with Sappers, but I think Sappers are a bit clunky and tough to include as a unit in actual gameplay, when designing my Goblin race concept I was trying to have the same amount of units as other races, and Sappers don't feel like a good alternative to any unit of other existing race, just doesn't fit well, since it's such a high risk and a gimmick unit.

I like the idea of Blast Off, but I'd make it more based off of Tristana's Rocket Jump or Corki's Valkyrie abilities from LoL.

The Public Relations idea sounds really fun, especially the entertainment distraction part, would be a fun effect to see.

---

Another cool unit or ultimate ability for a Hero would be to construct a Flying Battle Ship, model similar to Undead's Sky Barge, with Goblin theme and cannons, it could have an ability like Phoenix' fire but attacking from it's cannons with siege damage and only ground units, would be interesting if it's possible to make the siege projectiles not perfectly accurate when the battle ship is moving.

 

[Bleeq]

I'll start off with a idea I had for the main building, the Goblin Outpost, having a couple of "tied up" zeppelins floating at the edges of the building for sake of protecting Goblin Workers (like Burrow mechanic but doesn't attack, can load up to 6 workers, and is just a repair-able building that can only be attacked by ranged units). The Outpost could spawn +1 Zeppelin with each tier upgrade, and maybe there could be a upgrade for the Zeppelins to untie and fly freely.

This is really weird, interesting and creative. What would be the use of them flying freely though?
It might end up being a bit like walking night elf buildings, I don't think most people used them for that besides moving to another gold mine.

I noticed you don't have sappers and zeppelins in there though

I'll quickly give some feedback on your stuff. My ideas were pretty barebones for the race as a whole, but I think my heros are fleshed out (I also would just use Tinker and Alchemist for 2 of them).
---

Stats for the workers probably don't matter much, but you made lackeys faster. Do you think that might help them tower rush? Would gobs have good or bad towers? Maybe that could be one of their gimmicks (like humans).

The thing to consider about bash, is it scales well with numbers. I'm using that for my kobolds as a tier 3 upgrade. with that, and a swarm of bashers, you can nearly stun lock larger enemies. So that's my way of trying to make a Vermin Tide a legitimate strategy. The workers and T1 melee are the same unit, and 1 food.

For the gunners, maybe you could call them rangers or scouts, and they could be the ones that help you get vision for your cannoneers. You could give them mini sentry wards, that don't have truesight. If they are really really spammable maybe dont even make the wards invis, so people can easily counter them.
But at least you could drop one near someone's base and bombard them easily from a safe distance. It means you don't need as much vision stuff on other units like your casters, either.

The sage definitely needs a bit more thought imo. Having both the critters and far sight on one unit is redundant for vision, and it's also like Orc Far Seer: part of the reason no one uses Far Sight is the wolves are good for scouting anyway. Unless you're really desperate for truesight, it's a worse ability.
Healing wave is a good spell, but maybe too good lol. I dunno what you could give him instead, it probably depends what are the themes and strategies you want the goblins to use.

Warlocks... having a passive ability, well it defeats the point of having mana. I feel like the point of having casters is they are baseline weaker than normal units, but they get to use spells now and then for a big impact that makes up for it, even if that spell can be auto-cast.
With Ray of Disruption, I believe I looked into this. My problem with it is it doesn't damage summoned units, it only works on enemies, and I don't think it intelligently targets units it can dispel. So it's a kind of a broken spell that's half finished, which is why blizz didn't use it more, or add the item for it to map pools.
That said, I am using something similar for my Kobolds. You target one of your buildings (or a boulder, that you can summon) and a bolt of lightning shoots out and jumps to like 5 units, dispelling friends, enemies and damaging summons. I made it in triggers and it's basically fully functional, except I don't know of a way to make it focus units with buffs you can dispel. It does prioritise summons, though.
Mana burn could be good, except again it might be too good. People already hate when a demon hunter locks your heros down non stop so they cant cast anything. Then imagine that but a swarm of them mana burning lol.
As a thematic gimmick, what if he could give your guys a Greed buff, that makes them do more damage depending on the targets level? It might need triggers, but wouldn't be too complicated I don't think.
Instead of manaburn, maybe he could curse the enemy with Braindrain which slowly drains their mana for damage. At least that way they can counter it with dispels. (This was another spell I considered for Rockettes).
Maybe a spell that you cast on your guys, to make them explode when they die? Make it not last long, but if they are focusing one of your units, quickly cast that on them. Called Unhappy Ending or something xxd

You've got lots of ranged units, maybe you can give your casters more snare spells, or gap-closers and retreat mechanics. And do they have any abilities to interrupt channeling?

You could maybe just use the spike rollers for damaging buildings. It shoots units, does siege damage to buildings in melee or something.

Maybe the gobbocopter gimmick is they can hold one sapper? so you can fly over enemies or their base and drop the sapper straight in there.
Might be op though. Maybe they move half speed with a sapper on board or something?

Goblin shredders are a bit flimsy, but they hit quite hard. Depending on your food and gold budget, you could make scale their stats up but keep them the same proportions.

I definitely think you could use Ogres as T2 or T3 melee units or whatever.

-Heroes-

BoomChemist

-As it stands, I think you might have enough vision related stuff already, but if you changed the sages spells then this sentry wards could be useful. But maybe try to work another thing into it. Maybe you could also remote detonate them to dispel or something?
-Burning oil, so like a longer lasting aoe? I had an idea a little bit like this
-Cyclone seems alright, but maybe feels a bit weird that you throw it and then it targets an exact unit. not as OP as hex so I can't complain about that
-Does it turn them into a frog instantly? or deal damage over time like Doom?

Capitalist

Unsurprisingly this is a bit like an idea I had too. Obviously lots of people woudl want to do something like this for Galliwix etc. lol

-Extortion is interesting, but maybe it could be a buff you cast on friends, to add some counterplay? Getting a percentage of the cost of an enemy unit is weird and interesting conceptually, but I'm not sure it's that interesting to play in the game. Like whenever you see an enemy unit, you target them with this and get a bit of money... Maybe it makes you want to bump into the enemy more often.. I dunno
-Like I said before. It feels quite dependent on shredders though, like the spell only works with a single unit. And if you take it early, what is it doing for you? It's cool that it works well with allies. They could gift you lumber and then you exchange it. With Night elf Ally it would become an infinity source of gold so you can turtle forever!
-Similar to my idea (I'll get to that)
-Peace treaty is a really cool idea. Totally didn't expect to see that haha. Might make Sappers op if you cast it, move sappers into their base, then boom when it wears off. Or maybe that's intended?

----

Spoiler: Even more text

My ideas are mostly barebones, so at least this shouldn't take too long. I wanted them to be ridiculous with wacky gameplay that might be a bit OP or even kinda underpowered because of the stupid gimmicks.

Worker
Clockwork Goblin - Mechanical
-Similar to ones summoned by Tinker, except they can't attack, builds buildings and mines gold. They explode against enemies when they die, and can repair each other

T1 Melee
Shredder - Mechanical
-Very similar to the normal one, maybe a little bit less damage. Only unit that cuts lumber. 3 food, bit less hp than a Grunt, but more damage.
They are more survivable because your workers can repair them, which helps with base defense and being rushed.
Because you have these for so long, you will most likely have lots of wood later on

T1 ranged
Gob-lobber - A little anarchist that throws cartoon bombs with fuses.
- I don't feel strongly about these, and it might be weird for them to attack air units. Maybe they research a snare later like Crypt Fiends.
But to me it feels more thematic than guns or whatever.

T2
Sappers
-At first they are 'Volatile' so like normal sappers lots of spells and mechanics don't work on them (invisibilty, speed scrolls, can't enter zeppelins). If you try, they immediately explode.
Tier 3 you can research Stabilised Nitro which enables these mechanics. Now you can cheese to your hearts content! Archmage mass-teleport them into the enemy base, turn them invisible, drop them from zeps etc. etc. All sorts of silly stuff.

T2
Zeppelin - mechanical
-Standard, but always available and you can mass them.
Later they combo with sappers.
Tier 3 you can upgrade them to Gear-off* Airships with the Bombardiers upgrade just because its a stupid Red Alert thing lol.
Maybe halves storage, but drops bombs onto land units.

T2
Mercenary Post
-This is a recent gimmick I thought of, because gobs didn't have enough biological units. So what happens is you build the Merc Post, and you get 3 random unit options. So it's basically like gambling lol.
I dunno if those units would be rolled when the map starts, or when you build the building, though. It might be interesting if you built a few Merc posts just to keep rerolling to get some good options hahaha.

T2
Casters
-I mentioned them already.

T3
Glass Cannon - mechanical
-Just a total gimmick. Either it's very fragile but shoots a laser beam over a long distance, or it looks like a mortar that lobs large galss objects that shatter on enemies for aoe damage, because that makes me chuckle. Maybe even transforms between the two options.

T3
Nickle Coil
-Not technically a unit, because it's a tower, but you'd be expected to use it offensively as well as defensively.
Basically a Tesla Coil that deals big hits of magic damage. You could build them and some fortifications 'in the field' or near the enemy base and keep them repaired with your tech priests. Same thing if you built houses or whatever as fortifications, your tech priests can keep them healthy so the enemy has a hard time breaking through.

-Heroes-

Alchemist
-unchanged. But you can get 2 if there's a tavern on the map.


Tinker
-Mostly unchanged
The pocket factory works as a resource drop-off point, and the clockwork goblins that spawn can mine gold. This makes it a secondary use as an economic ability
When he becomes a robot the tech priests can heal him... which might be really OP but oh well lol


Super Goblin
A ranged agility hero themed around Nukes. Looks like Doctor Manhattan if he was a green Goblin. I'll probably make a model for this eventually.

Irradiate - slow aoe damage on a location. Doesn't affect mechanical units, and units accumulate radiation ticks, so they take escalating damage the longer they stand on it.
Radiation Poisoning - Basically the Autocast ability from Firelord (incinerate I think?) except the counter from Irradiate works for this and vice versa. No one used Firelord before anyway so I don't care about stealing his spells
Static Aura - Thorns aura but for ranged attacks. Bit of a placeholder.
Ultimate - Fission - Super gob channels for ~5 seconds and then explodes in a mushroom cloud doing huge damage. The damage is scaled to his remaining health, so the counters are both interrupting his channel, or focus firing him to reduce the blast.
Damage wise I'm thinking like 800-1000 spell damage (so reduced against heros) at full health, which is doubled against buildings. It should level most of a base at full health.

Robber Baron
Melee strength hero.
This guy is in it for the long haul, turtling, and team games.

Best deals anywhere - reduces prices by 10/20/30%, or something similar (15/25/35?). Not great early, but could mount up. Passive
Time is Money - kinda like your shoe shine, but you can cast it on anyone. 20/40/60% move speed, 10/20/30% attack speed. Early on the movespeed is more important, later on the attack speed is a decent buff. It can synergise with sappers late in the game, or help you tower rush or build an expansion by making the workers fast.
Compound - This is his most interesting abilty imo. Has a passive component and can also use it actively. Active spell pounds an enemy in melee to stun it for 3/4/5 seconds, So he has something to click. Also useful if you really need an interrupt. Passive ability is periodically your current resources are compounded by 10/20/30%. If you have 100 gold when this triggers, you get 10g extra. If you have 1000 gold, you get 100g extra etc.
This incentivizes hoarding resources, or possibly even avoid spending on units etc, or expand as quickly as possible. Having this guy high level with this and the discount can be powerful just because of the economics.
It means you can theoretically turtle forever, with a renewable gold source.
It's also really cool in a team game because it encourages allies to send you money to get the compound interest on it, like a real bank lol! The strat might be for 1 or 2 other players to feed the goblin player because of his discounts and compound interest.
You could even have a 4v4 game with massive turtle bases and live off the compound interest. The goblin player might not even have any units left except this guy and he's still useful.
Ultimate - Bling - doubles the effect of held items, items with charges become infinite (but might need to add cooldowns to some items). If you found good items like claws +15 or bought a khadgar's gem of health, this will be pretty nice. If you don't have any good items and can't but any then just skip it I guess.
I think it synergises well with some of the other economic things though. Not sure what to do about the aura items..


Other random stuff

The lumber shipments. I'd make them upgrades at Tier 3. They cost more lumber and give less gold each time until the button is greyed out and says "the market is saturated".

Tier 3 upgrade - Bionics. Your mechanical units can now be healed, and your biological units can be repaired. Might be impossible to implement, and OP.

Shady contract - unique item at Tier 2 or 3. Cast on an enemy hero to swap this for the item they have in the corresponding slot. Probably requires a channel. Once in their inventory it just says "should have read the fine print". Good way to steal items, or remove their Town Portal so they can't escape.

 

[Bleeq]

I think this is hard to balance, this kind of Hero early on could either be too OP or too UP, imagine someone attacking your workers without you being able to detect them, if you play non-aggressive early on you'll suffer, but if you play aggressive the player using this PotM strategy will definitely be the one suffering, since his Hero has to be weak. Also imagine the creep abuse haha

At level 1 I don't think the worker abuse would be too terrifying. But it does make the character quite complicated. It's like she went from a totally passive character into something with a lot of BS going on all of a sudden. Haha it is weird though, if you moonfired some creeps on the other side of the map, would they aggro all the way to you or...?

You're right about Fortified armor being pretty strong/OP, as a measure to weaken it I reduced Shredders hp to 525, and it still survives with 40-50hp when fighting a Tauren, and I'm not sure if that's fine balance considering the Tauren didn't have Pulverize + Spirit walkers can revive Taurens and Taurens can benefit from Bloodlust, but also Mechanic can heal Shredders.

And Tauren are rubbish lol! The biggest thing to consider is how hard fortified armor counters magic and pierce attacks. Just by having that armor type your shredder would strongly hard counter ranged attacks, and halve damage from hero attacks, too. What would be the counter to shredders? Just siege units like Meat Wagons?

I like the idea overall, the dispel is pretty interesting, could be named with electricity in mind, something like Super Charge, since Purge is also electric and it dispels. And would make sense why it messes with the mechanical units. I don't know if Landmine fits with this unit though, since it sounds more like a supportive unit, something to detect landmines would make more sense for it's abilities.

I'm pretty attached to the name, or something like it. It's related to Arcanum which, tbh, I haven't played, but I'm lead to believe magic and technology sort of cancel each other out in that game lore. You make another good point, I don't think I gave my gobs a single detection ability.

I like the idea of Blast Off, but I'd make it more based off of Tristana's Rocket Jump or Corki's Valkyrie abilities from LoL.
The Public Relations idea sounds really fun, especially the entertainment distraction part, would be a fun effect to see.

I haven't played LoL, but that Corki thing looks like my original idea, judging by the wiki. I didn't factor in other flying units for my goblins so Rockettes would be legit threats in that form, like 20-25 pierce damage vs air and land units. Makes up for the lack of wyverns etc. Maybe.

Another cool unit or ultimate ability for a Hero would be to construct a Flying Battle Ship, model similar to Undead's Sky Barge, with Goblin theme and cannons, it could have an ability like Phoenix' fire but attacking from it's cannons with siege damage and only ground units, would be interesting if it's possible to make the siege projectiles not perfectly accurate when the battle ship is moving.

So the bombs would just kind of bombard underneath? or still target enemies, but not be very accurate?
Either way should be very possible. An edited Phoenix Fire might even get most of the job done.


ED:
It's very sad you don't want to use sappers
That's like taking axes away from the Orcs! Or druids from Night Elves! Or skeletons from the Undead!

 

[Scias]

This is really weird, interesting and creative. What would be the use of them flying freely though?
It might end up being a bit like walking night elf buildings, I don't think most people used them for that besides moving to another gold mine.

I noticed you don't have sappers and zeppelins in there though

Oh what I meant is, upgrading the zeppelin would basically turn it into a normal zeppelin, that you can use to pick up units and drop them off. It's like the Zeppelins are attached to the Outpost but you can set them free, and after some time another spawns in it's place.

Stats for the workers probably don't matter much, but you made lackeys faster. Do you think that might help them tower rush? Would gobs have good or bad towers? Maybe that could be one of their gimmicks (like humans).

I didn't even give my Goblins a tower, since playing vs Computers I was just lazy, and the only Goblin-fitting tower I could find in the models seems like it necessarily needs to revolve around Tiny Rockets kind of attack or ability.
Reading your idea on Nickle Coil, gave me an idea for a "Nickle Tower" maybe, that would have weak attack damage but gains +5 gold per attack. It would be interesting for tower rushing since economy plays a lot into tower rush.

The thing to consider about bash, is it scales well with numbers. I'm using that for my kobolds as a tier 3 upgrade. with that, and a swarm of bashers, you can nearly stun lock larger enemies. So that's my way of trying to make a Vermin Tide a legitimate strategy. The workers and T1 melee are the same unit, and 1 food.

Yeah I agree, I was cautious about balancing it, and I think it works quite alright, since I made the Clubber have 320 hp, they're very fragile and 5% chance seems low enough, they are still a very bad unit that you want to transition out of.

For the gunners, maybe you could call them rangers or scouts, and they could be the ones that help you get vision for your cannoneers. You could give them mini sentry wards, that don't have truesight. If they are really really spammable maybe dont even make the wards invis, so people can easily counter them.
But at least you could drop one near someone's base and bombard them easily from a safe distance. It means you don't need as much vision stuff on other units like your casters, either.

I'll address this vision part all in one here, yeah there should be limit to how many units support the artillery's mechanic by providing vision, I was thinking if you go with the Hero with the Sentry Wards you can pull off the tactic without the need of Sages, so you'd skip casters tech. While if you opt for other heroes you'd have to pull it off through casters tech. With that in mind, giving that option to Gunners kind of breaks this options and just makes the strategy always work, no matter the tech / Hero choice.

The sage definitely needs a bit more thought imo. Having both the critters and far sight on one unit is redundant for vision, and it's also like Orc Far Seer: part of the reason no one uses Far Sight is the wolves are good for scouting anyway. Unless you're really desperate for truesight, it's a worse ability.
Healing wave is a good spell, but maybe too good lol. I dunno what you could give him instead, it probably depends what are the themes and strategies you want the goblins to use.

Haha yeah those 2 abilities kinda serve same purpose, maybe instead of critters they can summon a pig that protects them (although I really just wanted something sheep themed for their first ability).
I set the Healing Wave to initially heal 50 hp on the first unit, and bounce only 3 times. It's pretty weak heal, and casting it over and over is just tedious, it's super weak in gameplay and just awful to use. I think of it kind of like statues, they heal AoE, and ideally you just wanna recreate that effect but in a different way.

Warlocks... having a passive ability, well it defeats the point of having mana. I feel like the point of having casters is they are baseline weaker than normal units, but they get to use spells now and then for a big impact that makes up for it, even if that spell can be auto-cast.
With Ray of Disruption, I believe I looked into this. My problem with it is it doesn't damage summoned units, it only works on enemies, and I don't think it intelligently targets units it can dispel. So it's a kind of a broken spell that's half finished, which is why blizz didn't use it more, or add the item for it to map pools.
That said, I am using something similar for my Kobolds. You target one of your buildings (or a boulder, that you can summon) and a bolt of lightning shoots out and jumps to like 5 units, dispelling friends, enemies and damaging summons. I made it in triggers and it's basically fully functional, except I don't know of a way to make it focus units with buffs you can dispel. It does prioritise summons, though.
Mana burn could be good, except again it might be too good. People already hate when a demon hunter locks your heros down non stop so they cant cast anything. Then imagine that but a swarm of them mana burning lol.
As a thematic gimmick, what if he could give your guys a Greed buff, that makes them do more damage depending on the targets level? It might need triggers, but wouldn't be too complicated I don't think.
Instead of manaburn, maybe he could curse the enemy with Braindrain which slowly drains their mana for damage. At least that way they can counter it with dispels. (This was another spell I considered for Rockettes).
Maybe a spell that you cast on your guys, to make them explode when they die? Make it not last long, but if they are focusing one of your units, quickly cast that on them. Called Unhappy Ending or something xxd

Haha true, I didn't know how to make the auto-cast version of the fireball (I just re-skinned Dryad's poison), otherwise I'd make it cost mana. But it would just be a effective auto attack.
I think Ray of Disruption works on summons, I used it as a hero ability before, but it's just really clunky to spam it with your caster units, especially when the rest of their abilities also require your control and attention. Imo ideally casters just do their autocast and have one ability that requires your focus to cast.
Mana burn is also OP when it damages 50 mana, but when it burns 25 mana it's more annoying for the person having to mass-cast it, and watching your units stumble to walk into the range of the Hero they're focusing. Meanwhile Chims and stuff just delete them as they come into range.

I was thinking giving Warlock some of the existing Warlock abilities or ones seen in Wc2 etc, from your suggestions only the last one fits with the concept of a Warlock in my mind, I'd probably call it Spontaneous Combustion, and make it work on enemy units though.

BoomChemist

-Burning oil, so like a longer lasting aoe? I had an idea a little bit like this
-Cyclone seems alright, but maybe feels a bit weird that you throw it and then it targets an exact unit. not as OP as hex so I can't complain about that
-Does it turn them into a frog instantly? or deal damage over time like Doom?

-Yeah an AOE on each attack, that at higher level does more damage then Catapult's Burning Oil, I think it's a pretty neat Hero passive ability, it looks nice and it scales with attack speed kind of, you can min-max it by splitting targets for more AOE, so it adds a lot of fun elements for a passive for my taste.
-Oh you do select the target just like with hex, it's basically the exact same but the enemy unit can't be targeted.
-Yeah it does damage, I just edited Doom, only difference is it creates a useless unit instead of a really strong one, in the tooltip I explained it as a toxic substance.

Capitalist

Unsurprisingly this is a bit like an idea I had too. Obviously lots of people woudl want to do something like this for Galliwix etc. lol

-Extortion is interesting, but maybe it could be a buff you cast on friends, to add some counterplay? Getting a percentage of the cost of an enemy unit is weird and interesting conceptually, but I'm not sure it's that interesting to play in the game. Like whenever you see an enemy unit, you target them with this and get a bit of money... Maybe it makes you want to bump into the enemy more often.. I dunno
-Like I said before. It feels quite dependent on shredders though, like the spell only works with a single unit. And if you take it early, what is it doing for you? It's cool that it works well with allies. They could gift you lumber and then you exchange it. With Night elf Ally it would become an infinity source of gold so you can turtle forever!
-Similar to my idea (I'll get to that)
-Peace treaty is a really cool idea. Totally didn't expect to see that haha. Might make Sappers op if you cast it, move sappers into their base, then boom when it wears off. Or maybe that's intended

-You're right, there's not much of a counter play to Extortion, other then pressuring the opponent because he has a weak hero haha, but yeah the idea behind the ability is just to gain economic advantage, I was thinking it would be fun to sneak your hero into enemy bases and extort from their main buildings for max profit.
-I feel like there's space for the ability to sell lumber to be synergized with some strategy, like being able to fund a couple more of extra gold-costly units early on by selling the lumber, that you otherwise wouldn't be able to pull off without this hero, I also like the idea that Goblins can provide resources for the entire team and not just themselves.
-I actually didn't think of sapper use during the Peace treaty but I was just sure there would be plenty of good use for it, deciding when you don't want anyone fighting, and the sapper use during peace treaty would be perfect demonstration of a Capitalists cunning strategy Lol.

And Tauren are rubbish lol! The biggest thing to consider is how hard fortified armor counters magic and pierce attacks. Just by having that armor type your shredder would strongly hard counter ranged attacks, and halve damage from hero attacks, too. What would be the counter to shredders? Just siege units like Meat Wagons?

Well, it's a tier 3 unit, and it's ineffective against range, Chimeras with corrosive breath would counter it hard, and at 525hp I think so would Frost Wyrms and Gryphons, Orcs would have Bat Riders, Raiders, Catapults to counter them, even Tauren do well against them too.

So the bombs would just kind of bombard underneath? or still target enemies, but not be very accurate?
Either way should be very possible. An edited Phoenix Fire might even get most of the job done.

Yeah it would target enemies but not be very accurate, like generally siege is inaccurate at targeting moving units, but with this one it would be a bit different, it's inaccurate when moving itself.

---

My thoughts on your concept:

I really like the early worker and Shredder for wood idea, I think this is quite refreshing start compared to other races and makes Goblins very distinct.

I would avoid giving Gob-lobber a powerful ability like snare, since I imagine Goblins being a race that builds up their power and doesn't contain it through out the game, so I'd imagine low tier units would drop off in power like Humans Footmen do for example. Web works on Crypt fiends since they transition well into tier2 and tier3. I would give them something more basic, that boosts them a little bit but doesn't make them a good counter for anything still.

The idea for sappers and zeppelins I like, although it's gimmicky for gameplay, it fits Goblins theme well. I just don't know exactly how good this gimmicky-ness is for overall gameplay, I can't imagine how this kind of gameplay would play off in a pro match, is there a way you can counter a sapper strategy, or is there a way that this strategy can win, I can't tell.

Mercenary post is also interesting, and plays into the the neutral / merchant theme, but I'm not sure I like it for gameplay and just as a fit with goblin aesthetics in general.

Love the idea of Glass Cannon being a Cannon that shoots literally glass.

I also like the Tesla Coil, I would consider it a ward though more so then a Tower/Building, and it being repair-able by mechanics sounds fun, especially if it doesn't cost resources to repair, plays into the economics of tower rush I mentioned earlier.

Super Goblin, overall very fun concept, only thing I don't like is that he has 2 passive abilities, an aura and Firelords incenerate, I would replace the aura with an active ability, something that either synergizes with Irradiate or with the Radiation Poisoning.

I really like the Robber Baron idea, especially the Compound ability and how it synergizes with teamplay and with the Best deals anywhere ability. It seems like a really cool hero for team games and ffa, but Bling ability might be a bit too OP haha.

Shady Contract is a bit too strong and game-breaking mechanic, being able to steal enemy Tp seems like it would affect the gameplay too much.

 

[Pyrogasm]

I read nothing in this thread but want to contribute the folllowing unserious idea:

A goblin race that doesn't have a beefy ranged/siege unit that throws/shoots/expels goblins as projectiles is doing it wrong.

 

[Bleeq]

For the sage, cut Far Sight, and then make the sheep explode on death and I'll be happy. Light damage but larger aoe.

Gobs actually already get an aoe heal because of alchemist, and usually a race gets their caster heal option at T2, so I'd move the heal to his second spell. It's kinda tough thinking of a healing mechanic that is both new/unique, and shepherd-y.
What about Invigorate where he channels a very strong heal, but it is mana intensive, to differentiate it from normal priest heal? But it seems too strong in combat.
Or he channels for like 3-5 seconds, and then at the end you get a lump sum of hp (200?). This makes it like Holy Light, but delayed so it's less reactive and powerful during combat. But if you timed it right you can still heal your hero during fights etc. And because he channels, the sage puts himself at risk. I'm quite liking this idea, actually lol.

Another support spell idea: Defensive Matrix. You drop a force field that makes your units under it tougher. Easy option is it just has an aura that gives your guys more armor (no triggers needed), but imo I would make it work on enemies too so you need to think properly about placement, and not just spam it everywhere. Or the forcefield gives you resistance against an attack type (say 30% pierce resistance). This would need triggers but is quite simple.

I think the warlock should have spells that feel Goblin, though. Not just generic warlock stuff. Life drain doesn't work so well on a strategic/tactical level either, because casters are quite flimsy, they aren't often going to be damaged enough for the healing part to be worth it. Like either they'll be dead or not hurt, so it wastes the healing. It works better for things that are going to tank some hits.

For Auto-cast you could have a lifesteal curse, but most of your goblin units are ranged :/
What about summons? All existing races have summons, and I don't remember seeing any above. Mischievous Imp could be very flimsy but spammable as a meat shield. And they don't give xp. Added gimmick: they have feedback so burn mana when they attack. You get your manaburn, it's counterable, and you could make it auto-cast too .

P.S. I followed the links on your icons and a lot of those models are quite rough. If you wanted to take this seriously I'd be happy to polish them up a bit like fixing the death animations, maybe add basic portraits. Not masterpieces or anything

 

[Scias]

For Goblin Sage,

• I really like the idea of making the Sages sheep explode on death, makes the ability very Goblin. With added explosive on the Sheep I would keep the Far Sight ability, and make this explosive Sheep more of a combat ability, could make them move faster and last short duration, it's Sapper Sheeps!
• Again kind of like with vision, if you don't pick Alchemist you could alternatively heal your units with Sages, but also them both combined makes for a tanky / supportive build (like Paladin + Priests) that doesn't do much damage. I think a thematically fitting heal would be something like Healing Salves, I noticed Inner Fire has unused life regen option, so I can pull it off through life regen + I can also think about armor and damage bonus or reduction while being healed. I think reduction kind of seems interesting, like the unit is under influence of strong medicine, but I'm not sure if it feels "Warcraft 3".
• A chunky delayed heal sounds interesting but I'm not sure about it being good on units, it sounds like something easier to balance on a Hero. Like a different version of Paladin who's Holy lights heal more but are delayed and can be prevented with CC.
• Another idea for heal could be some kind of Locust ability that does negative damage attack to friendly units, healing them. But I think I'll have to go with the healing salve idea, to avoid the 3 active abilities again.

For Warlock,

• I think I can also pull off "Internal Combustion" for Warlocks by using Inner Fire making it reduce hp regeneration (damaging) + reduce armor of the unit by 2, and make it target enemy units.
• Love the idea of Warlock having a Imp summon, but I wish I could pull it off in a way that you don't have to control the Imp, it just becomes an additional unit that follows the Warlock around. Maybe the imps could be something like summoned ground version of Faerie Dragons, damaging enemy casters and phase shifting.
• And I think the 3rd ability (not necessarily the tier3, but ordering of the abilities could be different), needs to be a dispel or some kind of caster counter, since otherwise my Goblin race would be missing a dispel haha

Yeah part of the reason I didn't plan to make the map public is that some of the models used are missing even the attack animations, and some things just necessarily need triggering, like the Outpost's defensive Zeppelin idea, the placeholder I have so far should never see a public release Also for some reason one of the models makes weird attachments on nearby units having sheeps and mechanical arms floating around.

 

[Bleeq]

They definitely need at least some sort of dispel.
Preferably at T2 or before. I was thinking of a couple ideas but they were only really useful offensively. You really need something that can be used in all situations, or multiple options to cover all the bases.

What about you give the dispels to the mechanic? He's kinda the third caster/weird unit.
Null Grenades - throws an anti-magic grenade that explodes after X seconds to dispel and damage summons in aoe. Not as easy to use as normal dispel but still interesting and involves more thought. You could throw them down before the casts go off. Or even add the mana burn thing from wisps. Assuming you don't give imps feedback.

I'm guessing mechanics are the sort of unit you only make if you really need them anyway. Like you wouldn't make them unless you had enough mechanicals to make it worth it. Same thing with the dispel, only make if facing necrowagon, mass sorceress, KotG etc.

I want to say that opens up the normal casters to do other stuff, but we haven't really come up with A+ ideas for those yet anyway lol

With the chunky heal, it would only work very well out of combat, and I'd prefer heros to have mechanics that aren't limited in that way.


If you wanted something else to brainstorm, I havent finalised the T3 spell for my kobold mushroom/disease caster. If I could finalise that and maybe 2 other hero spells they would be basically complete design wise.
The spells atm are:

Geomancer
Summon a boulder
Dispel I mentioned before (can use boulder)
Defensive Autocast buff

Mycologist (mushroom)
Aoe dot
Aoe heal
???

My first idea was "Rabies" which gives a unit a big buff for a short time, and then when it ends they take huge damage hit. You could put it on big units so they die from the damage hit after 20-30 seconds (so you have to decide if thats worth the trade off.. Or you might infect them and then kite them around). But it felt a bit too much like unholy frenzy.

The only other idea I've really had is "Public relations" I mentioned earlier, but you drop a mushroom that mesmerizes the enemy instead of an image. But that doesn't make a lot of sense lol, It just reminds me of an idea from a Kids tv show decades ago.

Both these ideas were supposed to be analogous to the HARD CC archetype like polymorph, cyclone, possession, devour etc.



ED: think of it this way with the chunky heal, you generally want your hero to be active doing things at all times, either creeping or travelling or engaging the enemy. And if they use an ability that needs channeling, it really needs to be high value. 1) it makes them a sitting duck to get surrounded etc 2) they are locked out of doing other things, like attacking. So the value of a channel ability needs to factor in the lost dps from the auto-attacks.

ED2: What's the difference between gunners and snipers? Are snipers just a straight upgrade and make gunners obsolete?

 

[Scias]

I made the following changes on Warlocks and Sages, and play tested the map:

Warlock Abilities:

• Warlock Flame - Tier0 passive ability, making Warlocks attacks do 5 damage dot setting enemies on fire, lasting 5 seconds.
• Ray of Disruption - Tier1 ability, still a crappy dispel that is placeholder till I figure out something better
• Summon Imp - Tier2 ability, it's Locust that summons 1 unit, and the Imp has Locust behavior, it just randomly attacks and sometimes heals the Warlock. The imp does very little damage (3-5 magic damage), but it also applies Warlock Flame dot on each attack.
• Internal Combustion - Tier3 ability, it's Inner fire that's cast on enemy units, setting them on fire and doing DoT damage. (Unfortunately doesn't autocast since I don't know how to make it work.)

These abilities make Warlock mostly a DoT damage dealer type of caster

Sage's Abilities:

• Exploding Sheep - Tier1 ability, summons a sheep that has kaBAAm! activated, running into first enemy unit/building it comes across and exploding, doing AoE damage
• Far Sight - Tier2 ability, same as Far Seers, but the reveal AoE is 800 and lasts 18 seconds.
• Healing Salve - Tier3 ability, applies healing buff (based off of Inner Fire).. Again sucks with the usage, the casters actively avoid casting it on low health units, but otherwise it's pretty good.

These abilities are quite fun, making Sage a bit of a siege caster with the exploding Sheeps, supportive caster along with the artillery strategy with Far Sight + Healing they can cast on the Cannonbearers.

In play test I went with this caster build + Boomchemist hero, and the whole mass AoE, mass DoT combo was really fun to play. I can imagine it combos well with Alchemist with his AoE heal and AoE dot. And I like how it fits with Goblins thematically making even their casters siege-themed, destructive and explosive, setting everything ablaze.

The only issue I noticed in playtesting is that a Warlock can clear a entire green camp on his own, by abusing creep AI and attacking with DoTs + Imp, which isn't something any other races caster can do afaik.

Some screenshots:

Spoiler: Screenshot_01

Spoiler: Screenshot_02

Spoiler: Screenshot_03

---

What about you give the dispels to the mechanic? He's kinda the third caster/weird unit.
Null Grenades - throws an anti-magic grenade that explodes after X seconds to dispel and damage summons in aoe. Not as easy to use as normal dispel but still interesting and involves more thought. You could throw them down before the casts go off. Or even add the mana burn thing from wisps. Assuming you don't give imps feedback.

This is a good idea, Goblin casters don't necessarily have to be able to counter casters, although they already do counter Necromancers for example with Explosive Sheeps blasting through the Skeleton minions.
But having Dispel on the mechanical tech/strat makes sense, and the Mechanic could use the 3rd ability.

Geomancer
Summon a boulder
Dispel I mentioned before (can use boulder)
Defensive Autocast buff

Is boulder an AoE stun that drops from the sky like when summoning a infernal?

My first idea was "Rabies" which gives a unit a big buff for a short time, and then when it ends they take huge damage hit. You could put it on big units so they die from the damage hit after 20-30 seconds (so you have to decide if thats worth the trade off.. Or you might infect them and then kite them around). But it felt a bit too much like unholy frenzy.

I like the idea of Rabies, but yeah you're right it makes it much like Unholy frenzy, you could maybe make it give damage bonus and lesser attack speed bonus (weaker then Frenzy) but after expiring it applies a debuff that reduces the units armor.

The only other idea I've really had is "Public relations" I mentioned earlier, but you drop a mushroom that mesmerizes the enemy instead of an image. But that doesn't make a lot of sense lol, It just reminds me of an idea from a Kids tv show decades ago.

It could be a Sleeping Shroom, making the unit fall asleep and wake up 3 times in a row, in a x duration, the sleep lasting 1 second each time. I was thinking of this ability before as a Dwarf ability getting target unit drunk, or making it as an after-effect of a Drunken Rage (basically Berserk buff)

ED: think of it this way with the chunky heal, you generally want your hero to be active doing things at all times, either creeping or travelling or engaging the enemy. And if they use an ability that needs channeling, it really needs to be high value. 1) it makes them a sitting duck to get surrounded etc 2) they are locked out of doing other things, like attacking. So the value of a channel ability needs to factor in the lost dps from the auto-attacks.

Yeah true, I wouldn't make it too long of a cast/channel time. I had an idea before for a channeled heal spell for a Paladin being mass Holy Lights, like healing version of Starfall. I just think of this stuff randomly sometimes, like "Oh man they should've made Uther have a special spell to make him stand out a bit from other Paladin characters".

What's the difference between gunners and snipers? Are snipers just a straight upgrade and make gunners obsolete?

Yeah Gunners are quite useless unit, tbh, I don't exactly know what to do with them other then that I like their model and felt necessary to use them plus I like the icon I made for them too haha. I think goblin mines might be the solution to make them viable, like imagine having them spam mines around the base to protect from Blademaster or Bloodmage harass etc. I also originally added them as a option that works along with Boomchemist, since his Bottles of Boom ability (burning oil) originally damaged friendly units and was really awful combo with the Clubbers, so if you picked him you had to go with the Gunners as the opening unit.

 

[Bleeq]

I'll add more to this post, but Auto-cast AI is controlled by "OrderID" or something. So like if you give the spell the OrderID of bloodlust, it will cast at the same time that bloodlust would normally be cast (which from what I can tell is the unit attacking something). You could try giving the combustion one Curse OrderID or something. If you want the spell to be spammed at every opportunity, you can give it OrderID for Parasite (The naga infection thing). If you Change parasite to affect both allies AND enemies, they will spam it on either, no matter if in combat or out of it or anything. lol.

ed: I'm looking into this, it's been MONTHS since I did anything interesting with World Editor.

Maybe this is related: https://world-editor-tutorials.thehelper.net/cat_usersubmit.php?view=14972

I was thinking that you can take an existing spell (that normally has a template), and then change the order ID. But I think I'm remembering/re-understanding that you can only really change the Order ID for the 'Channel' Spell, which is part of the reason it is so handy.
I have a little bug I never got around to fixing, that my defensive buff actually uses the AI of bloodlust, so it gets cast on my units that start attacking something, instead of casting on the thing that gets attacked.

Hmm but then Channel doesn't include auto-casting, I don't think. I know I used to understand this >.<

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z17FTnhyfVL87tJgLmwWks3Low6TuQ0tjfKHXBELWpo/edit?tab=t.0

Only slightly related, I just tested ray of disruption on the draenei, and it only lets you cast if "friendly unit has negative buff" or "enemy unit has positive buff". it wont let you cast it on a friendly summon. It won't let me cast it on an enemy summon either (dunno if they have a buff or not, this was getting pretty hard to engineer/stage).
I had my hero with negative buff (Curse) standing next to enemy summons (skeletons), which let me cast Ray of Disruption on my hero, but it didn't jump to the skeletons and dispel them. If you cast it on an enemy that has a positive buff, will it then jump to enemy summons and dispel them? I dunno... But it's getting pretty annoying to use at this point.

Either way, I'm gonna take a break prob post some more tomorrow.

 

[Scias]

I'll add more to this post, but Auto-cast AI is controlled by "OrderID" or something. So like if you give the spell the OrderID of bloodlust, it will cast at the same time that bloodlust would normally be cast (which from what I can tell is the unit attacking something). You could try giving the combustion one Curse OrderID or something. If you want the spell to be spammed at every opportunity, you can give it OrderID for Parasite (The naga infection thing). If you Change parasite to affect both allies AND enemies, they will spam it on either, no matter if in combat or out of it or anything. lol.

Ah, thanks, I got it working as intended now. The casters are quite fun to play with at this point, I'll have to look into spicing up the other stuff to make it on-par with the casters. Fixing Gunners and maybe figuring a way to add Sappers into the mix.
What could work for sappers is maybe making a special building that produces them, that you can build offensively and then try to build sappers inside enemy base.. Probably ideally a tier2 thing.. And could work well along with tower rush.

...Now thinking a mobile building with hide (camoflage) ability that is visible once it starts creating sappers, would be interesting sneaking it towards enemy base.

Only slightly related, I just tested ray of disruption on the draenei, and it only lets you cast if "friendly unit has negative buff" or "enemy unit has positive buff". it wont let you cast it on a friendly summon. It won't let me cast it on an enemy summon either (dunno if they have a buff or not, this was getting pretty hard to engineer/stage).
I had my hero with negative buff (Curse) standing next to enemy summons (skeletons), which let me cast Ray of Disruption on my hero, but it didn't jump to the skeletons and dispel them. If you cast it on an enemy that has a positive buff, will it then jump to enemy summons and dispel them? I dunno... But it's getting pretty annoying to use at this point.

Hm I'll have to look at the custom heroes map I made in past, Silvermoon Sorceress a hero I designed there had a "Fiery Dispel" ability that was based off of this bouncing dispel, and it definitely works on summons (I tested it just to make sure right now).

 

[Bleeq]

I take it back, I looked at your map and Ray of Disruption Can dispel, but it isn't technically enabled by default. The basic spell has damage to summons set as 0 (your hero map put numbers in there). So that's cool.
I would almost replace my triggered dispel with this, except now I think there's another tiny annoying thing: If you use it to dispel your own units, it wont jump to enemy summons, and vice versa. I dunno about positive and negative buffs, if it will jump. It jumps from enemy positive buffs to summons. And it gives xp when it kills the skellies, which is all great.

----

I made the following changes on Warlocks and Sages, and play tested the map:

Warlock Abilities:

• Warlock Flame - Tier0 passive ability, making Warlocks attacks do 5 damage dot setting enemies on fire, lasting 5 seconds.
• Ray of Disruption - Tier1 ability, still a crappy dispel that is placeholder till I figure out something better
• Summon Imp - Tier2 ability, it's Locust that summons 1 unit, and the Imp has Locust behavior, it just randomly attacks and sometimes heals the Warlock. The imp does very little damage (3-5 magic damage), but it also applies Warlock Flame dot on each attack.
• Internal Combustion - Tier3 ability, it's Inner fire that's cast on enemy units, setting them on fire and doing DoT damage. (Unfortunately doesn't autocast since I don't know how to make it work.)

These abilities make Warlock mostly a DoT damage dealer type of caster

Sage's Abilities:

• Exploding Sheep - Tier1 ability, summons a sheep that has kaBAAm! activated, running into first enemy unit/building it comes across and exploding, doing AoE damage
• Far Sight - Tier2 ability, same as Far Seers, but the reveal AoE is 800 and lasts 18 seconds.
• Healing Salve - Tier3 ability, applies healing buff (based off of Inner Fire).. Again sucks with the usage, the casters actively avoid casting it on low health units, but otherwise it's pretty good.

These abilities are quite fun, making Sage a bit of a siege caster with the exploding Sheeps, supportive caster along with the artillery strategy with Far Sight + Healing they can cast on the Cannonbearers.

In play test I went with this caster build + Boomchemist hero, and the whole mass AoE, mass DoT combo was really fun to play. I can imagine it combos well with Alchemist with his AoE heal and AoE dot. And I like how it fits with Goblins thematically making even their casters siege-themed, destructive and explosive, setting everything ablaze.

The only issue I noticed in playtesting is that a Warlock can clear a entire green camp on his own, by abusing creep AI and attacking with DoTs + Imp, which isn't something any other races caster can do afaik.

NGL I have a sneaking suspicion these guys might be a bit overtuned

For Warlocks:
Does that fire damage stack? If you have 4 warlocks, they attack something, and then that thing takes 100 unresistable/dispellable damage over the next 5 seconds?
Given the Ray actually mostly works, I think it's not the worst option, especially if you reskinned it something else. It sorta already feels goblin or demon-y.
Is the Imp counterable in any way? dispels? My issue with going this route is it doesn't seem very interactive. You press the button and then a thing does stuff without any further input from either you or the enemy. Is it almost another passive? When I thought of giving them a summon it was for a meat shield to protect all the goblin ranged units, and you could use it as another scout without feeding xp.
In general I really think casters should avoid doing straight damage as their niche, because then what's the point of using like gunners or snipers? If their battlefield role is ranged damage, and then the caster's specialty is ranged damage, one will be better and make the other one pointless. Usually the battlefield role of casters is they do utility or strategic/complicated things that can give you an edge, instead of brute forcing with tough basic troops. But that's the trade-off. With Sorcs or Banshees, they aren't tough on their own but you leverage their spells to hopefully make the rest of your army more effective, like a multiplier. ATM it looks like Warlocks have 4 abilities, 3 of them are basically "more damage" and they are all pretty passive.


For Sages:
How hard do the sheep explode? If you get surrounded by footmen, can you summon 2 sheep and instantly wipe them all? Does the explosion have friendly fire? You don't need dispels if things die before they can put up a fight. I dunno maybe you already did this, but it would need some sort of cooldown before activating. I didn't think about this initially (kinda like runes in Skyrim work instantly, so most people don't even use them as traps but just normal blasting spells).
I'm not sure but does that make Far Sight better than the hero version? The hero one doesn't last very long, right? I also think Humans get too many options for this tbh.
How strong is the healing salve? You have to consider this is a thing that can basically "always be on", almost like an aura. So is it balanced like an aura? Unless I dunno, maybe it costs loads of mana, so you have to be picky.

This is a good idea, Goblin casters don't necessarily have to be able to counter casters, although they already do counter Necromancers for example with Explosive Sheeps blasting through the Skeleton minions.
But having Dispel on the mechanical tech/strat makes sense, and the Mechanic could use the 3rd ability.

I'm not sure it's easy to do without triggers, though. Maybe pocket factory, and after 3 seconds it produces a wisp which instantly detonates? But how would you force it to detonate without triggers?

Is boulder an AoE stun that drops from the sky like when summoning a infernal?

That's technically how it works atm lol coz it was one of the first spells I ever made about a year ago., but the use-cases don't work well yet. It needs a lot of work, but the idea is multi-purpose. First I want it to be like SC2 Force Field, to control movement and make choke points. Secondly it's an option for the dispel. You can either target your own buildings to shoot out a lightning bolt of grounding energy (is that contradictory lol?) to cancel out magic, or you can use the boulders for grounding. third, I might make it a siege tool, because kobolds don't have a normal catapult type unit. There's 1 or 2 other gimmicks I'll probably cut.

It could be a Sleeping Shroom, making the unit fall asleep and wake up 3 times in a row, in a x duration, the sleep lasting 1 second each time. I was thinking of this ability before as a Dwarf ability getting target unit drunk, or making it as an after-effect of a Drunken Rage (basically Berserk buff)

Single target? or anything that comes close? I don't think the kobolds have any other Hard CC so I feel like they should get something like that. I assume those type of spells were intended as hard counters to Knight-tier units, and it's an archetype all the normal races seem to have, or vaguely in the case of Undead. A mushroom that pops and sleeps things nearby mind be kinda alright, at least they'd wake up when attacked, but that might make it too crappy and unreliable at the same time for big battles.

Yeah Gunners are quite useless unit, tbh, I don't exactly know what to do with them other then that I like their model and felt necessary to use them plus I like the icon I made for them too haha. I think goblin mines might be the solution to make them viable, like imagine having them spam mines around the base to protect from Blademaster or Bloodmage harass etc. I also originally added them as a option that works along with Boomchemist, since his Bottles of Boom ability (burning oil) originally damaged friendly units and was really awful combo with the Clubbers, so if you picked him you had to go with the Gunners as the opening unit.

It's a cool icon it's normal to have a T1 ranged unit, to me it's more about differentiating the sniper and gunners. But I dunno what stats they have or what exactly you want their roles to be. Are they both good or bad at the same roles?

 

[Scias]

For Warlocks:
Does that fire damage stack? If you have 4 warlocks, they attack something, and then that thing takes 100 unresistable/dispellable damage over the next 5 seconds?
Given the Ray actually mostly works, I think it's not the worst option, especially if you reskinned it something else. It sorta already feels goblin or demon-y.
Is the Imp counterable in any way? dispels? My issue with going this route is it doesn't seem very interactive. You press the button and then a thing does stuff without any further input from either you or the enemy. Is it almost another passive? When I thought of giving them a summon it was for a meat shield to protect all the goblin ranged units, and you could use it as another scout without feeding xp.
In general I really think casters should avoid doing straight damage as their niche, because then what's the point of using like gunners or snipers? If their battlefield role is ranged damage, and then the caster's specialty is ranged damage, one will be better and make the other one pointless. Usually the battlefield role of casters is they do utility or strategic/complicated things that can give you an edge, instead of brute forcing with tough basic troops. But that's the trade-off. With Sorcs or Banshees, they aren't tough on their own but you leverage their spells to hopefully make the rest of your army more effective, like a multiplier. ATM it looks like Warlocks have 4 abilities, 3 of them are basically "more damage" and they are all pretty passive.

It doesn't stack
It's not the worst option but it's kind of not ideal either, I just find this kind of single target abilities to be really difficult to use when you have to control Heroes and their abilities already, might be a skill issue on my part.. But also by design most of the dispels are auto-cast or easy to cast (AoE), only Purge is an annoying dispel to use.
There isn't exactly a counter to it since you can't even target the Imps unfortunately haha, I wish I could edit the Locust ability and just make the Imps follow the Warlocks but otherwise are a normal summoned unit (since having so many summons that you have to control / put on a hotkey would be annoying for gameplay again), I tried creep wander ability but that seems to make them just really good at kiting, and the player still has to control them..
It could work as a flesh version of ranged damage units maybe, and Snipers could be mechanical (this would also differentiate Snipers from Gunners too, and make Gunners viable as a combo with Sages tech/build)

So far having play tested the map a couple of times, I find the Goblin race to be really weak against Night Elves, Mountain Giants get tickled by the casters and snipers build, only Shredders counter them slightly, but the Shredders get destroyed by Chims.. Dryads can't be attacked by the casters, but Snipers counter them when they aren't wasting their time shooting the MGs. Neither Alchemists transmute nor Boomchemists frogificator can be cast on MGs and Dryads, so these ults only counter Chims, and with rejuvation on a Chim the frogificator can take eternity.

For Sages:
How hard do the sheep explode? If you get surrounded by footmen, can you summon 2 sheep and instantly wipe them all? Does the explosion have friendly fire? You don't need dispels if things die before they can put up a fight. I dunno maybe you already did this, but it would need some sort of cooldown before activating. I didn't think about this initially (kinda like runes in Skyrim work instantly, so most people don't even use them as traps but just normal blasting spells).
I'm not sure but does that make Far Sight better than the hero version? The hero one doesn't last very long, right? I also think Humans get too many options for this tbh.
How strong is the healing salve? You have to consider this is a thing that can basically "always be on", almost like an aura. So is it balanced like an aura? Unless I dunno, maybe it costs loads of mana, so you have to be picky.

I made the sheep explosion just like Lv3 Clockwerk goblins, it's pretty strong ability against Footmen, Ghouls, Skeletons, but pretty weak against ranged (since you can just destroy the sheep before they get to explode into your army)
Yeah the Far sight is stronger then the Far Seers in a way, lasting longer, but having lesser radius. It sort of needs to last long enough for the artillery to be able to fire, but I guess I can fine-tune that with the amount of casters in mind. I checked the humans reveal lasts 15seconds so that might be a ideal duration in this case too.
The healing salve increases life regen rate by 10, I assume this is 10% life regen bonus? Lasts 12 seconds and costs 45 mana.

I'm not sure it's easy to do without triggers, though. Maybe pocket factory, and after 3 seconds it produces a wisp which instantly detonates? But how would you force it to detonate without triggers?

Yeah I don't know how to pull that off. haha

That's technically how it works atm lol coz it was one of the first spells I ever made about a year ago., but the use-cases don't work well yet. It needs a lot of work, but the idea is multi-purpose. First I want it to be like SC2 Force Field, to control movement and make choke points. Secondly it's an option for the dispel. You can either target your own buildings to shoot out a lightning bolt of grounding energy (is that contradictory lol?) to cancel out magic, or you can use the boulders for grounding. third, I might make it a siege tool, because kobolds don't have a normal catapult type unit. There's 1 or 2 other gimmicks I'll probably cut.

Wouldn't that kind of AoE stun be OP on a regular unit? It sounds more suited for a hero spell, but the idea of it being used for dispel works, I just don't think it makes much sense that a boulder falling from sky dispels magic.

Single target? or anything that comes close? I don't think the kobolds have any other Hard CC so I feel like they should get something like that. I assume those type of spells were intended as hard counters to Knight-tier units, and it's an archetype all the normal races seem to have, or vaguely in the case of Undead. A mushroom that pops and sleeps things nearby mind be kinda alright, at least they'd wake up when attacked, but that might make it too crappy and unreliable at the same time for big battles.

It sounds like a Stasis trap that sleeps instead of stunning, should work fine. And it sounds like a cool ability for Kobolds, would fit your Mushroom caster model really well.

It's a cool icon it's normal to have a T1 ranged unit, to me it's more about differentiating the sniper and gunners. But I dunno what stats they have or what exactly you want their roles to be. Are they both good or bad at the same roles?

Yeah Gunners need some work to figure out their position in gameplay haha, I'm still thinking mines might be ideal (despite how annoying they are to use), that would synergize them well with Sages, Sages being able to heal Gunners + both having AoE abilities. I also noticed Gunners work better along with Alchemist then Snipers do, since they're always nearby and compact for his AoE heals to be effective, while Snipers with their long range are shooting from outside of Alchemists heal range. Snipers work better with Boomchemist and the vision wards / reveals.

For stat comparison

• Rifleman: 535hp, 18-24 damage, 1.35 attack cooldown, 0 base armor, 400 range (that can be upgraded). Costs 205gold 30lumber. Tier1 unit.
• Gunner: 455hp, 16-20 damage, 1.45 attack cooldown, 1 base armor, 400 range. Costs 165gold 35lumber. Tier1 unit.
• Sniper: 545hp, 23-31 damage, 1.65 attack cooldown, 2 base armor, 1000 range (that can be upgraded + has windwalk upgrade). Costs 255gold 40lumber. Tier 2 unit (that transitions into Tier3 with upgrades)

 

[Bleeq]

It doesn't stack
It's not the worst option but it's kind of not ideal either, I just find this kind of single target abilities to be really difficult to use when you have to control Heroes and their abilities already, might be a skill issue on my part.. But also by design most of the dispels are auto-cast or easy to cast (AoE), only Purge is an annoying dispel to use.

They used to want the races to have more varied abilities to counter casters, but I think casters were seen as too OP in ROC (the balance was complete BS for lots of things in ROC, tho) so they homogenised the dispels. Like wasn't this when healing totems had 200hp each or something? That seems like a big reason why mass orc casters were op...
These days, judging by the pros, it seems like casters don't get much of a look besides priest/sorc (but you need AM for aura). NE almost never get used, Orc either for dispel or maybe spirit link, Undead.... hardly ever.

There isn't exactly a counter to it since you can't even target the Imps unfortunately haha, I wish I could edit the Locust ability and just make the Imps follow the Warlocks but otherwise are a normal summoned unit (since having so many summons that you have to control / put on a hotkey would be annoying for gameplay again), I tried creep wander ability but that seems to make them just really good at kiting, and the player still has to control them..
It could work as a flesh version of ranged damage units maybe, and Snipers could be mechanical (this would also differentiate Snipers from Gunners too, and make Gunners viable as a combo with Sages tech/build)

IMO you wouldn't really bother controlling imps, I'd make them not last long (20/30 seconds?) and you summon them in combat and let them do w/e they want. They'd kinda be like skellies except you can summon them easily and they aren't very threatening. Totally expendable trash meatshields. But spammable.
Is the locust ability that makes them fly around the same as the thing that makes them unclickable? Because I think it's an established thing to give a unit the "Locust" ability so they no-clip, cant click, and invulnerable. I never tried making a spell where a killable thing wanders around the caster tho

So far having play tested the map a couple of times, I find the Goblin race to be really weak against Night Elves, Mountain Giants get tickled by the casters and snipers build, only Shredders counter them slightly, but the Shredders get destroyed by Chims.. Dryads can't be attacked by the casters, but Snipers counter them when they aren't wasting their time shooting the MGs. Neither Alchemists transmute nor Boomchemists frogificator can be cast on MGs and Dryads, so these ults only counter Chims, and with rejuvation on a Chim the frogificator can take eternity.

Well tbh MGs counter almost everything. Theoretically T3 melee counters them, but they had to give knights "sundering blades" or whatever because it was almost impossible for Humans to counter MGs AT ALL. Their armor type means they are only weak to hack attacks, but T1 melee don't hit hard enough because of the hardened skin ability. From memory that was Grubbys experience Orc vs NE, You had to beat them before they got upgraded MGs or the match became practically unwinnable (tho BM was a bit better than FS/TC). But they hard counter ranged and casters because of their armor type, plus resistant skin.

I made the sheep explosion just like Lv3 Clockwerk goblins, it's pretty strong ability against Footmen, Ghouls, Skeletons, but pretty weak against ranged (since you can just destroy the sheep before they get to explode into your army)
Yeah the Far sight is stronger then the Far Seers in a way, lasting longer, but having lesser radius. It sort of needs to last long enough for the artillery to be able to fire, but I guess I can fine-tune that with the amount of casters in mind. I checked the humans reveal lasts 15seconds so that might be a ideal duration in this case too.
The healing salve increases life regen rate by 10, I assume this is 10% life regen bonus? Lasts 12 seconds and costs 45 mana.

So I looked that up, 80 damage for a sheep boom? That's not as bad as I was expecting I'd still prefer 50-60ish but its not strong enough for me to bitch endlessly about
You know, because snipers can windwalk they can reveal for the artillery anyway. If you've got 2 summons spells, pocket factory summons, wind walk and sentry wards... Far sight is bringing this to 6 different spells which help spot for artillery. It's quite a bit.

For healing salve, that would be 10hp/s. Compared to other options it might even be underpowered. I think it would risk making the unit too tanky if the healing went up, but making the buff last longer (16/18?) would improve the mana efficiency. ATM it is less mana efficient than Rejuvenation.
My worry is about prebuffing making units too tough in the next battle, but it has some dispel protection because it's a cheap spell to recast. Rejuv is strong but you lose more if dispelled, too.

Wouldn't that kind of AoE stun be OP on a regular unit? It sounds more suited for a hero spell, but the idea of it being used for dispel works, I just don't think it makes much sense that a boulder falling from sky dispels magic.

It doesn't stun (anymore), I just used inferno as a base spell to summon the boulder after x seconds (and the Idea is it bursts up from under the ground. Now that I'm a bit better at modelling I could actually make a boulder that looks like this). The dispel is a separate spell. You create a boulder with Uplift, and then you cast Ionise on that boulder, which basically shoots out a Ray of Disruption to dispel nearby things (also damages the boulder). So if you want to use dispels in a big fight you kinda have to plan ahead with boulders. Alternatively you can use your own buildings to bounce the rays off, to make base defense easier, especially against mas summons.
But tbh I don't want their dispel to be super easy and effective, partly because they have a few other anti-magic mechanics. And it's one of their weaknesses, like having bad air units. Then again, it has the upside of self-aiming the dispels, you just have to do annoying preparations.

It sounds like a Stasis trap that sleeps instead of stunning, should work fine. And it sounds like a cool ability for Kobolds, would fit your Mushroom caster model really well.

Last night I was thinking I really like the sleep idea. But maybe just calling it Sleep Spores and it works basically the same as dreadlord. It would be really cancerous against heros but less powerful than poly against units.
The stasis trap thing is more interesting, but probably not that useful in a real game, judging by how little people use stasis trap (and the stun is probably more powerful than sleep anyway).

Yeah Gunners need some work to figure out their position in gameplay haha, I'm still thinking mines might be ideal (despite how annoying they are to use), that would synergize them well with Sages, Sages being able to heal Gunners + both having AoE abilities. I also noticed Gunners work better along with Alchemist then Snipers do, since they're always nearby and compact for his AoE heals to be effective, while Snipers with their long range are shooting from outside of Alchemists heal range. Snipers work better with Boomchemist and the vision wards / reveals.

For stat comparison

• Rifleman: 535hp, 18-24 damage, 1.35 attack cooldown, 0 base armor, 400 range (that can be upgraded). Costs 205gold 30lumber. Tier1 unit.
• Gunner: 455hp, 16-20 damage, 1.45 attack cooldown, 1 base armor, 400 range. Costs 165gold 35lumber. Tier1 unit.
• Sniper: 545hp, 23-31 damage, 1.65 attack cooldown, 2 base armor, 1000 range (that can be upgraded + has windwalk upgrade). Costs 255gold 40lumber. Tier 2 unit (that transitions into Tier3 with upgrades)

I already did the grenade thing, but you could give gunners flash grenades at T2 to reveal enemies. That would give them a niche, assuming Far Sight got cut.

ED:
This is from my Kobold design spreadsheet, I plugged the gunner and sniper stats in the bottom to compare them

Spoiler

Those greens and reds in Column W are their 'stat budget', which is a combination of dps and survivability per food. 12.7 at the top is the average budget for T1 units and it shades red or green depending how much higher or lower it is than the average. If gunner is a 2 food unit, it is very strong (stat wise).

ED2: If gunner was 3 food, he'd be underpowered. Both archer and huntress are misleading, because of bouncing attack and archers are more surviable versus magic and pierce attacks because of Elune's Grace ability.

 

[Scias]

They used to want the races to have more varied abilities to counter casters, but I think casters were seen as too OP in ROC (the balance was complete BS for lots of things in ROC, tho) so they homogenised the dispels. Like wasn't this when healing totems had 200hp each or something? That seems like a big reason why mass orc casters were op...
These days, judging by the pros, it seems like casters don't get much of a look besides priest/sorc (but you need AM for aura). NE almost never get used, Orc either for dispel or maybe spirit link, Undead.... hardly ever.

Yeah I think generally the autocast abilities are prioritized, and it just depends which casters have good autocast and which don't. For example Sorceress polymorph ability should be pretty strong in theory, but using it is too difficult and it's not effective, when you have to do so much focused clicking / selecting and your opponent can just dispel in mass AoE with a single hotkey.

IMO you wouldn't really bother controlling imps, I'd make them not last long (20/30 seconds?) and you summon them in combat and let them do w/e they want. They'd kinda be like skellies except you can summon them easily and they aren't very threatening. Totally expendable trash meatshields. But spammable.
Is the locust ability that makes them fly around the same as the thing that makes them unclickable? Because I think it's an established thing to give a unit the "Locust" ability so they no-clip, cant click, and invulnerable. I never tried making a spell where a killable thing wanders around the caster tho

Yeah, Locust makes the unit untargetable so they're invulnerable. Hm, you would make the Imps melee? I feel like in that case it kinda clashes too much with the Sapper Sheeps from Sages, since it's about same skill with summon rushing towards the enemy units except one is exploding and the other is a body block.

So I looked that up, 80 damage for a sheep boom? That's not as bad as I was expecting I'd still prefer 50-60ish but its not strong enough for me to bitch endlessly about
You know, because snipers can windwalk they can reveal for the artillery anyway. If you've got 2 summons spells, pocket factory summons, wind walk and sentry wards... Far sight is bringing this to 6 different spells which help spot for artillery. It's quite a bit.

For healing salve, that would be 10hp/s. Compared to other options it might even be underpowered. I think it would risk making the unit too tanky if the healing went up, but making the buff last longer (16/18?) would improve the mana efficiency. ATM it is less mana efficient than Rejuvenation.
My worry is about prebuffing making units too tough in the next battle, but it has some dispel protection because it's a cheap spell to recast. Rejuv is strong but you lose more if dispelled, too.

I feel like it's not as strong as it sounds, since most of the time the AoE isn't full damage.
I made the snipers windwalk really short (6 seconds), it's just there to stop being targeted and give them ability to escape (since they have so much higher range then Heroes, it's easy for them to be caught without Hero support)
The healing salve being one of the weaker healing spells should be fine, since Sage is pretty strong overall, poor healing could be one of the Goblin weaknesses.
Though, you're right about this spellcaster duo being more of a ranged DPS (through abilities) then a supporting unit.

But tbh I don't want their dispel to be super easy and effective, partly because they have a few other anti-magic mechanics. And it's one of their weaknesses, like having bad air units. Then again, it has the upside of self-aiming the dispels, you just have to do annoying preparations.

Guess you'd have to playtest it to get the feel of the ability usage, you don't wanna end up with something like Stasis Trap that's barely used.

Last night I was thinking I really like the sleep idea. But maybe just calling it Sleep Spores and it works basically the same as dreadlord. It would be really cancerous against heros but less powerful than poly against units.
The stasis trap thing is more interesting, but probably not that useful in a real game, judging by how little people use stasis trap (and the stun is probably more powerful than sleep anyway).

I think one of the reasons Stasis Trap is underused is the delays in both turning invisible and exploding, possibly because otherwise it would be a OP ability having units that can quickly AoE stun. Your Sleep Spores could have quicker timer to blow up and put units to sleep, it would make the ability more use-able, and it wouldn't be as OP as Stasis Trap since the units can't be attacked (will wake the unit up) and the sleep duration could be shorter than the Stasis stun.

This is from my Kobold design spreadsheet, I plugged the gunner and sniper stats in the bottom to compare them

Spoiler

Those greens and reds in Column W are their 'stat budget', which is a combination of dps and survivability per food. 12.7 at the top is the average budget for T1 units and it shades red or green depending how much higher or lower it is than the average. If gunner is a 2 food unit, it is very strong (stat wise).

ED2: If gunner was 3 food, he'd be underpowered. Both archer and huntress are misleading, because of bouncing attack and archers are more surviable versus magic and pierce attacks because of Elune's Grace ability.

I guess Gunners need less hit points then, maybe 385 would make them weak enough, or maybe even 365 if I keep the Goblin land mines ability on them.
Snipers seem kind of weak for a "tier2.5" unit (since the t3 upgrades make it more of a t3 unit)? But I guess their range makes up for it.

 

[Kyrbi0]

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