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help me improve this unit

What should the "Scarlet Shell" (a PASSIVE ability) do?

  • Reduce ranged attacks by x (atleast 10) and deal 25% of incoming melee damage back to the attacker

    Votes: 1 12.5%
  • Reduce spell and magic damage by y (atleast 50%) and give the Scarlet Defender at least 7 armor

    Votes: 1 12.5%
  • Make the Scarlet Defender immune to spells and magic while giving him an armor bonus of 5 or so

    Votes: 1 12.5%
  • Make the Scarlet Defender immune to spells and magic and deal 25% of incoming melee damage back to t

    Votes: 3 37.5%
  • Reduce all attacks by z (at least 10) while and deal 25% of incoming melee damage back to the attack

    Votes: 2 25.0%
  • Other: Please explain in the thread

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    8
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Rem

Rem

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The unit is called Scarlet Defender
38074-1e245efc82a47e15f3091726092fe075_tn2.jpg

The finalized ver will have a much redder hue

Now it's supposed to be a 900hp tank unit, originally intended to have resistant skin, critical strike, and an ability that reduces magic damage by 50, and piercing damage by 35.
It can atttack both ground and aerial targets.

This unit is designed to be a tank/defender

what abililities should I have this unit have to make it more effective
 
Level 9
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Im guessing this is for some sort of melee map, and this unit is designed to be a tank?

Here are some basic suggestions:

- You could give this unit the tauren classification and change around ancestral spirit so they could resurrect each other, but give them a high food cost if you implement this

- Adding hardened skin will make them very hard to destroy, but you can modify how much damage is ignored with hardened skin

- Feedback will make them excellent against spellcasters and heroes

- Some sort of black arrow or searing arrow or anything of that nature could be changed around to make the unit able to inflict a buff on its enemy


What exactly are you looking for?
 

Rem

Rem

Level 7
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a melee map. .i jus want a unique tank unit
like the name says its meant for defense more than anything else
 
Level 9
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You could give the unit spiked shell, just rename it to spiked armor and change the btn, that way all melee enemies will receive a portion of the damage they inflict

You could give it roar

You could give it a renamed bash but youd have to remove critical strike

I'll add some other things later, I just cant focus on this right now
 
Level 12
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900 Hit points is too little for a tank, won't really hold much damage, on the other hand the abilities are pretty good,
 
Level 10
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I would think about what to add to make it a target so it can utilize its tankiness. If it is not interesting for the enemy, it wont be targeted and thus won't tank anything.

Most tanks have either of these: Damage, utility or CC

Giants and tanks got massive siege damage, druid of the claw (bear form)( got roar and can transform back, tauren got pulverize, Chieftain got shockwave, endurance aura and war stomp. Abomination got.... yeah, better forget about that

So, lets implement some of that.
I honestly would scrap critical strike and give it something more interesting. The other abilities are fine in my oppinion.

1. Dueling presence
On an attack, has a chance to force the unit to attack the Scarlet defender (similar to a normal taunt of a mountain giant, so you can micro it away), reducing its movementspeed by 20% for 3 seconds
Comment: simple, yet effective cc. Has an inbuild taunt to even play better in the tanking theme​

2. Defensive command
On attack, got a chance to increase the armor of allies in an area of 200 by 5 and their damage by 10% for 5 seconds. Got an internal cooldown of 10 seconds
Comment: utility-ability. The internal cooldown with the attack trigger can be easiliy done via an orb of slowness-ability with an modified roar.​
 

Rem

Rem

Level 7
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sadly im not the best at creating triggers,

also from my own experience unless u force a unit to attack another unit the orb of slow thing doesnt work

i have been told that you could implement a trigger system to make it work. but i have no idea what to do, not a clue on how it would actually work either
 
Level 12
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You could give the unit spiked shell, just rename it to spiked armor and change the btn, that way all melee enemies will receive a portion of the damage they inflict

Do this, except instead of giving the unit spiked shell give it a highly modified thorns aura that only affects the unit itself (only check self in the targets) also modify the ability and the buff, so instead of a thorns aura buff you get something else, for example something like "Scarlet Shield" or "Scarlet Shell" or something and rename the buff to the same name. Use the big bad voodoo target buff instead of the main thorn aura buff, put in the description of the ability something like "deals (X)% of a melee attacker's damage back to the attacker" make that (X) around 50% or so, to make it really effective

just my thoughts on this, since you've asked multiple times
 
Level 12
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You could do several things:

One option is to give the unit harden skin, just place it in the 0, -11 position so it wont be visible to the player, and then either have it ignore like 5 damage from ranged attacks only and add the description to the scarlet shield ability "reduces ranged attacks by 5 damage and deals (X)% of a melee's attackers damage back to the attacker" or alternative you could just have the hardened skin ignore both melee and ranged damage and simply write "reduces damage from attacks by 5 and deals (X)% of a melee's attackers damage back to the attacker"

Alternatively if you wanna make the Scarlet Crusader really OP you could replace the thorns aura ability with permanent immolation, but keep the big bad voodoo target buff and the "Scarlet Shield" or "Scarlet Shell" name so that way any hostile nearby unit around the defender will be damaged

I had other ideas but these ones are possibly the easiest to implement
 
Level 5
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83
'Scarlet Defender'

so what you intend this unit to be is a tank? with only 900 hit points? if you intend on keeping it at 900 hit points i would advise you to give the unit 10 or 11 armor. . . and perhaps spell immunity, that way it can actually compare to a tank unit
 
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Rem

Rem

Level 7
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keep the good ideas comming

i really appreciate this, you guys, i really do =)
 
Level 9
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You could do several things:

One option is to give the unit harden skin, just place it in the 0, -11 position so it wont be visible to the player, and then either have it ignore like 5 damage from ranged attacks only and add the description to the scarlet shield ability "reduces ranged attacks by 5 damage and deals (X)% of a melee's attackers damage back to the attacker" or alternative you could just have the hardened skin ignore both melee and ranged damage and simply write "reduces damage from attacks by 5 and deals (X)% of a melee's attackers damage back to the attacker"

Alternatively if you wanna make the Scarlet Crusader really OP you could replace the thorns aura ability with permanent immolation, but keep the big bad voodoo target buff and the "Scarlet Shield" or "Scarlet Shell" name so that way any hostile nearby unit around the defender will be damaged

I had other ideas but these ones are possibly the easiest to implement

This is a pretty good idea imho

I came up with a number of ideas:

i. Create an aura that heals restores 10 hp every time the unit gets hit, do this using triggers, this will make a 900hp unit a super tank

ii. Give the unit divine shine

iii. Give the unit spell immunity, or make it extra resistant to spell damage by modifying either elune's grace or spell reduction ability (used for runed bracelet item I believe)

iv. I would suggest increase the hp, if you dont wanna do this increase the armor at least

v. Give the unit an ability that allows it to heal itself (also you can make this very ability deal AOE damage) that way the unit will last longer in battle


I will give more suggests at a later time
 
Level 12
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959
It's supposed to be a tank, aka warrior unit, mana shield would be a good idea for some mage, idk, I dont think this fits very well
 
Level 9
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464
I see

You could always increase hp regeneration from 0.25 to 0.75 or more that will really increase the longevity of the unit despite having only 900hp
 
Level 9
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Sorry I really didnt think of that

Well how about these suggests:

Arm the tank with abilities like life steal, vapiric potion, rejuvenate
 
Level 5
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instead of life steal, or vampiric potion, I would suggestt you give the tank "Life Steal (Frostmorn)" ability, its under neutral hostile, in essence it allows whoever has it to steal a percentage of the damage he does to other units; its not a temporary buff, also its not an aura, I think this will balance it out more or less
 
Level 9
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instead of life steal, or vampiric potion, I would suggestt you give the tank "Life Steal (Frostmorn)" ability, its under neutral hostile, in essence it allows whoever has it to steal a percentage of the damage he does to other units; its not a temporary buff, also its not an aura, I think this will balance it out more or less

That will make the unit too op, I actually had experience with this -its not a good idea

I have 2 new suggestions:

i. Give the unit an ability that allows it to stun non-hero units for like 5 seconds

ii. Give the unit cleaving attack - this might make it slight op, but its worth a try
 
Level 9
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I would tend to say that a tank require abilities that keep him alive longer, also it has to do some decent damage, I mean if something costs 5 or more food and it has horrible damage no one would train it
 

Rem

Rem

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@-Phoenix- That and the fact that its more of a defender then a pure tank-unit. it needs to do deal good damage in order to quickly get rid of enemy units -on the other hand it should not be used to attack enemy bases, somehow I need to make its attack weak against structures. . .
 
Level 12
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Maybe a critical strike that has a high (30-35%) of deal double (or even triple) damage, I never really thought about the concept you now mentioned, Rem
 

Rem

Rem

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it was called the scarlet defender for a reason =) Main purpose for this unit is to ward off attackers targeting your units or base
 
Level 28
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Give it an ability that connects it to a tower, letting them share health (repair the tower, regen the unit; heal the unit, fast-heal the tower).

Or make it good against swarms of units (cleave, splash or multi-target damage, war stomp) but with a slow attack so high-end units can counter it.
 
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Perfect isn't really the right word. To me a tank unit is there to get in the enemy's way and stay there, soaking up damage so weaker units (who do the real damage but are very fragile) aren't getting killed. Doesn't necessarily have to be a huge damage sponge either, imagine a unit with 200 HP and 95% Evasion. Giving them offensive abilities would basically lead to making armies composed solely of tank units, because why wouldn't you?

For example: Mountain Giant and Paladin. The first has lots of HP and Taunt, but attacks slowly and is a more effective against buildings than units. Paladin has two defensive abilities and a heal, but can only be used offensively when fighting one out of four types of enemies.

Similarly, corpse-eating Abominations don't attack, but they do regenerate health, and thus can't be ignored in favor of the units behind them.
 
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Level 12
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Giving them offensive abilities would basically lead to making armies composed solely of tank units, because why wouldn't you?

That depends on how you balance them out, you can have them cost a great deal, consume 5 or 6 food, or be really ineffective at attacking enemy bases, or slow, or something else, that way you would not be able to just get an army solely consisting of tank units. I know this because back when I was working on a project we had the same issue, and giving the unit a huge gold and lumber cost on top of having a cost of 5 food usually solved this problem.

Somebody pointed this out before

you get 100 food

5 food is consumed by 5 workers in the mine

5 food is consumed by 5 workers gathering wood

that leaves 90 food

You need soldiers to defend your base, at minimum its like 3 basic infantry + 2 ranged anti air units + 1 heavy tier 3 unit

that would be 3*(2 food) + 2*(3 food) + 1*(4 food) = 16 food

So that leaves 74 food,

you likely have at least 1 hero, the hero costs 5 food, so that's down to 69 food

you definitely need spellcasters and healers in your invasion force, so that's 3*(2 food) = 6 food

you are left with 63 food, which gives you 12 tanks if they cost 5 each, or 10 if they cost 6 each

Not a very strong invasion force considering that there are hard counters to them like flying units or strong spellcasters
 

Rem

Rem

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Remember how the name is Scarlet Defender?

It's a unit whose purpose is to defend, I have a few sugestions to make it feeble at attacking bases, etc.
 
Level 12
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Just because they are able to attack air units does not make them super effective against them, also most heavy air units have a magic attack that deals 2x the damage to units with heavy armor; this is a major disadvantage to heavy units,

if something deals 40 damage per hit and the unit has heavy armor and 900 hp, every hit deals 80 damage, since it has some armor it would be reduced to 70 or so damage

900/70 = 12.8

multiple heavy air units will essentially wipe out this tank in no time
 

Rem

Rem

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The unit will not have a strong ranged attack. as i mentioned it would be able to defend against air units, but not as good as normal ranged units like rifleman, or headhunters

-also this is what everyone always forgets to mention: one reason rifleman or headhunters are so good against air units is because they have medium armor
 
Level 9
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If you want the tank to be able to fight aerial units without being op against them give the tank ensnare with a long cooldown (12+) as opposed to allowing it to attack aerial units directly
 
Level 5
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Still depends on how dangerous they are, in this case he said they can attack ground and air so that's one less counter. Having ten of a hard-to-kill unit at once could easily do enough damage to cripple an enemy even if they're wiped out.

^this is a very valid concern. but with the right balances it should not really be a problem. Im by no mean a great modder, but I have created some maps in the past. What you can do is create a strong unit, say ~1200hp, decent armor and good attack damage and everything, maybe change its name to "Unshakeable" or something along those lines, BUT make it have a slow movement speed and have it cost 6 food and lots of lumber and gold, as well as a long build time. This way it wont likely be massed, but I suppose a player can still go on and abuse it if he has enough resources.
 
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^this is a very valid concern. but with the right balances it should not really be a problem. Im by no mean a great modder, but I have created some maps in the past. What you can do is create a strong unit, say ~1200hp, decent armor and good attack damage and everything, maybe change its name to "Unshakeable" or something along those lines, BUT make it have a slow movement speed and have it cost 6 food and lots of lumber and gold, as well as a long build time. This way it wont likely be massed, but I suppose a player can still go on and abuse it if he has enough resources.

Reasonable suggestions, but isn't a unit with 1200hp even with a high food cost and all that more likely to be abused than a 900hp unit with a lower cost? The more hp the more you can get healers to keep the unit alive, and its easier to keep a few strong units alive than it is to keep a greater number of them. You can't really mass a 6 food unit, but you could easily abuse how you use 5 or 6 of them in a group.

On another note I really like the unshakeable name, could use that if I ever make any more maps with modified units
 
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Tank plus dps is overpowered as hell in my eyes, no matter the food cost, as it becomes too cost effective, leaving any other ground unit useless. A specialized tank (a tank that does certain, very particular, things more efficiently) is another different story.

But here i'm just presenting some ability ideas.
I'm assuming you only use vanilla WC3 abilities and no triggers, so:
1. An ability to decrease enemies attack something very useful by tanks, that could be achieved by:
1.1. Using roar (with negative values) or howl of terror.
1.2. The ability is in fact metamorphosis and you morph the unit to another one (same model and stats). The alternate unit has command aura (with negative values). Metamorphosis has a duration field (useful here), so why not adding the alternate unit some taunt aswell.
You could add this alternate form a basic negative mana regeneration (on the respective unit editor field) so it seems like "mana shield" but with an aura.
This idea can be tweaked creatively very easily, ie. the alternate form has negative mana regeneration and "resistant skin", mimicking toggleable skills like immolation.
2. An ability that conveniently disables the attack of a unit, achievable by modifying drunken haze/soul burn accordingly.
The name could be like, "intervention" or something. If you set the missile speed of drunken haze to 0 the effect will be instant if i recall correctly (or was it acid bomb?).
Another similar approach could be using curse/drunken haze again but resigning to cause the unit to miss most of its attacks, let's say 75%. A nice name could be "blinding light".
Suddenly the unit is a paladin.
3. An ability that triggers, sort of, when the unit dies.
The obvious one is reincarnation, but what about this:
Use the spawn hydra/spawn hydra hatchling (neutral hostile) ability (it summons some units when the owner unit dies). The unit spawned is a random globe of light/wisp (the soul of the defender) that has: locust (so it's unselectable), health/mana regen aura (i would suggest a high value here), and a basic negative health regeneration (let's say -1.0) and its base HP is directed to mimick a duration (let's say 5 HP, so it lasts 5 seconds).
 
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