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Hard to kill heroes

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@Reon

If you mean multiple stacking devotion auras, just copy and paste devotion aura and its respective buff that way you create many versions of it, don't forget to link each ability to its buff.

So say Devotion aura(I) would be linked to Devotion Aura (I) buff, make multiple of these and also you might wanna rename it to something more suitable. (The (I) is an editor suffix, only visible in the editor)

Make sure the ability only targets heroes btw, thats the whole point right?

Provide the hero with several strong melee guard units, each one having a different version of this aura and that should do it. The player will need to take care of the guard units before being able to really damage the hero.
 
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@Lord Esdin

Giving the hero an ability that summons multiple strong units with either vampiric aura or some healing aura: Ive seen this done before and it will take things to another level for the player

i tried this and noticed that any summoned units are REALLY suseptible to dispell, abloish magic, etc

is there a way to go around this w/o giving the vampiric aura bearing unit spell immunity???
 
Level 7
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I think you can use a trigger to remove the summoned classification, this will negate damage from dispel or any other similar spells

use unit is summoned as event

for condition make sure the summoned unit type = unit type of the unit

for action remove classification
 
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If you want the battle to really be harsh, make the hero gain spell immunity and other advantages when his hp goes below like 33% Player will have a cheerful time getting rid of him
 
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I would recommend either modifying avatar or metamorphosis, there are other ways but you have to be skilled with triggers and creating abilities
 
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I have experimented with this and avatar isnt the right spell, is there a way to give the hero additional armor (like + 10) and spell immunity without the whole avatar effect? I relly dont like how it increases the hero in size btw

I just want the hero gaining sprll immunity and armor bonus after he only hsd like 20% or so of his health left
 
Level 28
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I have experimented with this and avatar isnt the right spell, is there a way to give the hero additional armor (like + 10) and spell immunity without the whole avatar effect? I relly dont like how it increases the hero in size btw

I just want the hero gaining sprll immunity and armor bonus after he only hsd like 20% or so of his health left
Metamorphosis. You can add the armor bonus and the spell immunity as an item ability and hide them if you don't want them to appear on the hero's command card (Just set their button position to 0,-11)
 
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im not understanding this. metamorphosis transforms your unit into a demon hunter. how is this supposed to give you spell immunity or armor???
 
im not understanding this. metamorphosis transforms your unit into a demon hunter. how is this supposed to give you spell immunity or armor???
You can edit the spell details to fit your needs. Metamorphosis changes the unit type, so you need to adjust the unit type of both from and to forms.
 
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Ok use metamorphosis, the unit your original unit will change to should be identical to it, with the exception of having spell immunity and an armor bonus (item armor bonus +10) the icons of which should both be located at 0, -11 so that they don't show up on the gui
 
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interesting, illl experiment with some of that
Also i want the ability triggered only when the units heatlh is below 20-25%, but I want the abilities removed once the hero's health is above those or reaches 50%
 
Level 7
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Here is how you do it with triggered

replace the first attribute bonus with spell immunity and the second with the armor bonus

  • Activate
    • Events
      • Unit - Archmage 0000 <gen> Is attacked
    • Conditions
      • (Life of (Attacked unit)) Less than (0.25 x (Max life of (Attacked unit)))
    • Actions
      • Unit - Add Attribute Bonus to (Attacked unit)
      • Unit - Add Attribute Bonus to (Attacked unit)
      • Trigger - Turn on inActivate <gen>
      • Trigger - Turn off (This trigger)
  • *************************************************
  • inActivate
    • Events
      • Time - Every 1.00 seconds of game time
    • Conditions
      • (Life of (Attacked unit)) Greater than (0.25 x (Max life of (Attacked unit)))
    • Actions
      • Unit - Remove Attribute Bonus from (Attacked unit)
      • Unit - Remove Attribute Bonus from (Attacked unit)
      • Trigger - Turn on Activate <gen>
      • Trigger - Turn off (This trigger)
Note: inactivate or trigger 2 is initially off
 
Last edited:
Level 7
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I scewed up, first you wanna set hero unit to a variable, then replace the attacked unit with the variable...this will simplify things

here s what I mean


  • Set Variable
    • Events
      • Map initialization
    • Conditions
    • Actions
      • Set Hero = Archmage 0000 <gen>
  • *************************************
  • Activate
    • Events
      • Unit - Archmage 0000 <gen> Is attacked
    • Conditions
      • (Life of Hero) Less than (0.25 x (Max life of Hero))
    • Actions
      • Unit - Add Attribute Bonus to Hero
      • Unit - Add Attribute Bonus to Hero
      • Trigger - Turn on inActivate <gen>
      • Trigger - Turn off (This trigger)
  • *************************************
  • inActivate
    • Events
      • Time - Every 1.00 seconds of game time
    • Conditions
      • (Life of Hero) Greater than (0.25 x (Max life of Hero))
    • Actions
      • Unit - Remove Attribute Bonus from Hero
      • Unit - Remove Attribute Bonus from Hero
      • Trigger - Turn on Activate <gen>
      • Trigger - Turn off (This trigger)

Also another piece of advice; you may want to give the hero Immolation once his hp is down
 
Last edited:
Level 7
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this could be more effective than simply increasing armor

  • ONE
    • Events
      • Map initialization
    • Conditions
    • Actions
      • Set HeroUnit = Paladin 0000 <gen>
  • ***********************************************
  • TWO
    • Events
      • Unit - Paladin 0000 <gen> Is attacked
    • Conditions
      • (Life of HeroUnit) Less than (0.45 x (Life of HeroUnit))
    • Actions
      • Unit - Add Hardened Skin to HeroUnit
  • ***********************************************
  • THREE
    • Events
      • Time - Every 1.00 seconds of game time
    • Conditions
      • (Life of HeroUnit) Greater than or equal to (0.45 x (Life of HeroUnit))
    • Actions
      • Unit - Remove Hardened Skin from HeroUnit
 
Level 5
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i don't know if this was mentioned before but you could give the hero extra hp regeneration once his hp goes down. that way he will be really hard to take down
 
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You could make the boss summon healer units nearby. Spawn they are summoned they have their heal cooldown reset so you have say 30 seconds to kill them before they rapidly heal the boss.

You could make the boss cast some buffed version of inner fire (Armour) on itself so you must dispel the inner fire to make it killable.

You could have some "special scripted spell" whereby the boss ensnares all enemy heroes, runs to set position then casts rain of fire on the heroes - not hard to kill but frustrating and forces the heroes to position in certain ways.

You could have the boss "broadcast" what it's going to do next, giving the heroes a small time duration to counter the coming spell. Eg a shield over his head means he's gonna cast a defensive spell, stun him to stop it. A lightning bolt over his head means hes gonna cast a powerful stomp, get out of his aoe fast.
 
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I was saying that when making custom units and heroes balancing is often the most difficult part, you really gotta make sure all the units are on par with their counterparts, regarding the difficulty thing, I was saying that if you're working on a campaign, something that I once did, then you gotta find good ways to increase the difficulty rather than just giving the enemy units more hp or armor, that works but its not the best way to do it.
 
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What in your opinion are the better ways to change the story difficulty then
 
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Effectiveness wise: one of the better things was to make the AI more aggressive as the difficulty increased

Another was simply handicapping the player, let me explain with an example from an actual mission I was working on

This was a major battle between 2 human armies

On hard the player would get reinforcements that consisted of a couple of units every 5 minutes
On medium the player would get the same reinforcements plus a few extra units every 3 minutes
On easy the player would get much more reinforcements than on normal every 2 minutes

On hard the player would get 20 gold every half minute from a structure
On normal the player would get 30 gold every half minute from the same structure
On easy the player would get 50 gold every half minute from the same structure

You could also vary how much units and gold the player starts off with, but unless its a mission where you dont have access to buildings to train units it wont matter much in the long run
 
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So in your opinion giving the player less resources to work with is better than say upgrading the enemy (research upgrades I mean)
 
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Yes, there are tons of things you can do to increase or decrease the difficulty of the mission without changing the overall gameplay, although handicapping the player and tweaking the Ai are just some of them
 
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K can you describe some of the other things you used? And what's your opinion on giving items to enemy heroes that give them auras on hard?
 
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Ok here are some of them (note: many of these were used by the people I worked with on the project, not by me, but they still work)

Making a major upgrade unavailable on hard

Giving the player an extra hero on an easier difficulty

Setting the food limit depending on difficulty - this works well like 120 food on easy 100 on medium and 80 on hard

Making the mission take place at nighttime on hard - this worked because visibility was a big factor in how fast the player can respond to attacks, also because some units regenerate health at night

Setting the max hero level at a mission depending on difficulty

Putting extra allies for the enemy on hard

Making the creeps attack the enemy on easy, no one on medium and the player on hard

Modifying the amount of bounty the player gets for slaying neutral units depending on difficulty

Setting up a hero such that the most powerful spell can only be learned to level 1 on a particular mission

Making cannon towers unavailable to built on hard

Making mercenary units unavailable on hard

making certain items unavailable on hard

Setting a built limit on certain units on hard/medium

Removing dropable units of rebirth on hard (they units lets you ressurect and control the unit that drops them, and were very useful in that mission)

As far as giving enemy heroes items that bestow them with auras on hard difficulty, I would suggest you do this, make 3 different versions of the item, lets say you wanna give an item that bestows a Brilliance Aura to an enemy hero, create 3 different versions of the item as well as the ability that it possesses, so on easy the enemy hero gets an item that bestows 0.75 mana regeneration per second, on normal the enemy hero gets an item that bestows 1.50 mana regeneration per second, and on hard the enemy hero gets an item that bestows 2.25 mana regeneration per second. That way difficulty increases gradually, not asymmetrically....also I would suggest you do this with command aura, make it 10%/20%/30% on easy/medium/hard respectfully, imo that would be a good difficulty modifier
 
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@Lord Esdin

Can you please give me an answer to what I asked you last time?

As far as terraining I can't help you much there because my experience is very limited with it. I know you can alter difficulty by using 2 things with it; 1) you can destroy bridges making sure that there is a "pinch point" where the player has to go through, this makes it significantly harder for the player to win 2) you can create or destroy unpassable obstacles (rock, debris, etc.) for the same purpose, you can also use both of the above mentioned things to limit a player's access to resources, also making it more difficult for him.

I've mainly created abilities for units when I was working on a project, one thing I've done in the past was create an upgraded footman unit that had resistance skin and critical strike with a little more hp (650 or 675 I can't recall precisely) that did a little more damage than a regular footman, the AI was able to mass this unit and make it a major pain for the player to progress through the last area of the map, especially so because the AI was able to summon several of these to any location every few minutes without warning (like mass teleport, but without any need for an archmage, since it was all trigger based)

Also the whole thing with flying units; don't make them effective against ground units, air units, and structures otherwise they'll get spammed.
 
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I mean if you create flying units, anywhere from just basic flyers that have a 2 food cost and 400 health to airships with over 1500 health, make sure they are not effective against all three categories of targets; air units, ground units and structures. If you do this the players will spam the unit and will easily win like this, for the purpose of balancing make it that so the flying unit is easier extremely effective at destroying one of the three categories, or moderately effective at destroying just two of them, while being much less effective against the other one.

To put it as a concrete example, one of the custom units that was featured in the project I worked on was a "heavy" airship, Now it had a slow siege attack which was effective against both ground units and structures, however it's 2nd attack which was against air units was weak, and therefore several anti-air units could easily take it down. The airship would only be effective in a full on assault if it had other flying units with it that were designed to take on flying units.
 
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I want to give the player strong airships, but I dont waa any him spamming them...also if it's a mission I really dont want him just spamming them and destroying the mission's target with it.

Also how would you suggest to make the airship strong, give it lots of armor, lots of hp, maybe cha ge its armor type?
 
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There are really 2 perfectly effective ways to make sure the player doesn't spam airships on a mission and destroys the enemy base with airships alone: 1) Disable the production of airships for the player for that mission 2) Go to advanced on the menu tabs, go to gameplay constants, check "use custom gameplay constants", find "Combat - Damage Bonus table normal" and make this your special armor that takes no damage from magic, piercing, etc. or whatever your air units attack with. Then make all your valuable buildings have this armor. I remember doing this for one mission, where your goal was to destroy a particular structure, and I noticed that it was super easy to just have a group of a dozen air units just fly to the structure and take it down. It worked perfectly.

I wouldn't mess with the armor type, because changing that may actually make the unit much more resiliant to attacks then you want it to be. But you can give it more hp and raise its armor. From what I remember our airship had 1750hp like 5 armor (light) and had a food cost of 8. It was really excellent against structures and good vs ground units.
 
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No, that would just make the unit extremely vulnerable to any kind of air threat, think of the regular Chimaera, you want it to be able to respond to air attackers, but not be very effective against them, technically speaking if its a 8 food unit it should be able to kill an anti-air flying unit one on one, but 2 or more of the same units should have no trouble taking it down. The balance is key here, if you create someone weak it will always get crushed and that will disbalance everything, if you make something OP, it will be very hard to take down, so you gotta balance it out. Also the stronger the unit is the more food it should consume, don't forget about that.
 
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Around 1,200HP - But this also depends on what abilities if any it has. Look at the frost wyrm, it doesn't cost 7 food merely because it has 1,350 hp, it costs 7 food because it has 1,350hp, and the freezing breath and frost breath abilities. Without these it would not be nearly as effective as it currently is.
 
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Depends on the food cost again.
I have in the past experiemented with airships. In the lore of the project I worked on technology was not well developed and almost everything was powered by magic, so keeping this in mind.

I have experimented with a heavy airship/bomber unit that had 2,500hp, a food cost of 10 and a really strong ground attack - however this unit was not practical to use as only a few of them could be produced and while this does limit spamming, it creates a balancing nightmare ...

Then we went down to 2,000HP 9 food cost I believe, also didn't work well

What I've found that a unit with HP ranging from 1600-1800 with a food cost of 8 is probably the best solution - it prevents spamming while at the same time gives the unit a strong aerial unit, now again this has to be balanced so that while it needs to be effective against ground units and structures it cannot be strong against anti-air flying units.

Once you have the approximate hp range down, lets say you want 1800HP, then fine balance the amount of armor you give the unit, a unit with just 5 armor will be much stronger than an identical unit with 1 armor.
 
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8 food is a lot of resources, what do you say to 7 food and 1500 health?
 
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A food cost of 7 allows this unit to be spammable, so it would depend on how strong its attacks are, also remember to give its attacks a short range (400-450) to make sure that ground structures and units have the range required to defend against it.
 
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I was experimenting with a slow attack that does 80-90 siege damage every 2.2 seconds, this attack also does AOE damage

Edit: the range is 450
 
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