TC20 - Stormreavers Clan (with bonus Satyr Legion faction)

[Kyrbi0]

First

In another world, I would've had the time to comment on this during development; maybe I'll still get the chance in the next two months, or during the voting. But in case I don't ( ), let me just say that I'm very much in love with this entry & consider it a top contender, design-wise. I really love almost everything you're doing here (almost a spiritual successor to your Satyr/Corrupted Ancient faction).

=

One of very few things I think would've been a more-exciting design choice revolves around the 4th hero (Turtle) & the "ranged support (?)" unit (Harbinger). I simultaneously am "eh" on having a Turtle (not even mounted by some dude, just the turtle himself?) as a Hero, and DISMAYED that you've left the amazing Wc2 Death Knight as a mere unit (if it weren't for Kam, I would be the preeminent Wc2-Death-Knight fan on this website ). The INDIGNITY!


And that's a very tidy set of issues, because my suggestion would simply be to swap them. I mean it's almost too good to be true; it's such a perfect 4th Hero for this Stormreaver clan, because not only could it be a spiritual successor to the Wc2 Death Knight, but in this case even quasi-literally a Wc2 Death Knight! (There are multiples-but-'countable' as all good Heroes should be (originally mass-produced units, the few who would remain after so many years & wars would be veterans of the craft & highly-skilled, like pseudo-Liches), and thematically it's a home-run slam for this faction (having 2 orcish & 2 undead-ish heroes just tracks to me, and 2 'wizards' does as well)). And the sky's the limit for this guy spell-wise; just ask @matyko for his list of "6 different Wc2-DK-inspired hero designs for Wc3" (one for each of the OG DK's abilities).

(I care less about what happens to the turtle, but I'm sure you could come up with a perfectly good utility for it as a unit. Could even be an homage to the Naga's Dragon Turtle unit)

Hopefully I can speak more on that (& the faction in general) later. But again, if not, this definitely has the Khyrberos' Seal of Approval. (design-wise at least; I still haven't even downloaded it )

(also, consider tossing the rest of the screenshots you have in that pile; you took the time to make a bunch for the thread but only have the 3 there now)

 

[Wazzz]

First

In another world, I would've had the time to comment on this during development; maybe I'll still get the chance in the next two months, or during the voting. But in case I don't ( ), let me just say that I'm very much in love with this entry & consider it a top contender, design-wise. I really love almost everything you're doing here (almost a spiritual successor to your Satyr/Corrupted Ancient faction).

=

One of very few things I think would've been a more-exciting design choice revolves around the 4th hero (Turtle) & the "ranged support (?)" unit (Harbinger). I simultaneously am "eh" on having a Turtle (not even mounted by some dude, just the turtle himself?) as a Hero, and DISMAYED that you've left the amazing Wc2 Death Knight as a mere unit (if it weren't for Kam, I would be the preeminent Wc2-Death-Knight fan on this website ). The INDIGNITY!


And that's a very tidy set of issues, because my suggestion would simply be to swap them. I mean it's almost too good to be true; it's such a perfect 4th Hero for this Stormreaver clan, because not only could it be a spiritual successor to the Wc2 Death Knight, but in this case even quasi-literally a Wc2 Death Knight! (There are multiples-but-'countable' as all good Heroes should be (originally mass-produced units, the few who would remain after so many years & wars would be veterans of the craft & highly-skilled, like pseudo-Liches), and thematically it's a home-run slam for this faction (having 2 orcish & 2 undead-ish heroes just tracks to me, and 2 'wizards' does as well)). And the sky's the limit for this guy spell-wise; just ask @matyko for his list of "6 different Wc2-DK-inspired hero designs for Wc3" (one for each of the OG DK's abilities).

(I care less about what happens to the turtle, but I'm sure you could come up with a perfectly good utility for it as a unit. Could even be an homage to the Naga's Dragon Turtle unit)

Hopefully I can speak more on that (& the faction in general) later. But again, if not, this definitely has the Khyrberos' Seal of Approval. (design-wise at least; I still haven't even downloaded it )

(also, consider tossing the rest of the screenshots you have in that pile; you took the time to make a bunch for the thread but only have the 3 there now)

Wow, thank you very much for the vote of confidence
So I have now included some of the WIP screenies in their own separate section - a lot of them were just showcasing individual units, and the ones that weren't sort of showed similar layouts to what the new screenshots have, so I decided to keep them a bit separate and limit how many I did include just to avoid "information overload" on the final presentation. Time will tell if this is a "winning" strategy or not

So for the Giant Turtle hero, man I am definitely taking a calculated risk with this, sort of erring on the side of Warcraft 3 having some elements in the melee factions that come right out of left field . Is it the best design? Probably not - but if it was, then maybe it wouldn't feel as "authentic" to the partially flawed design of the base game . But I'm very happy that design wise this is the only gripe - and maybe I'll be the only person to do such a hero design in the end, although that may be for a good reason . The Turtle hero is absolutely a wild card, though. I wanted to include him as a weird, long forgotten beast of the Stormreaver shores in place of a traditional warrior .

I do hope you get to find the time to check it out ingame, I am sure you'll get a kick out of at least one of the potential "Proper Names" for the Warlock (although now I've mentioned that, maybe that's going to be something to look at in the Editor to save rolling the dice on that one) and hopefully it pays a strong homage to a franchise we've known and loved for many years and, ideally, many more to come

 

[Kyrbi0]

So I have now included some of the WIP screenies in their own separate section - a lot of them were just showcasing individual units, and the ones that weren't sort of showed similar layouts to what the new screenshots have, so I decided to keep them a bit separate and limit how many I did include just to avoid "information overload" on the final presentation. Time will tell if this is a "winning" strategy or not

Nice. I don't know about "strategy" or "information overload" but it's not a huge deal either way, so fair enough.

I do hope you get to find the time to check it out ingame, I am sure you'll get a kick out of at least one of the potential "Proper Names" for the Warlock (although now I've mentioned that, maybe that's going to be something to look at in the Editor to save rolling the dice on that one) and hopefully it pays a strong homage to a franchise we've known and loved for many years and, ideally, many more to come

Heck yeah. As a Official Proper Name Enjoyer I always check them to see if people put some love into that little piece of the Object Editor.

So for the Giant Turtle hero, man I am definitely taking a calculated risk with this, sort of erring on the side of Warcraft 3 having some elements in the melee factions that come right out of left field . Is it the best design? Probably not - but if it was, then maybe it wouldn't feel as "authentic" to the partially flawed design of the base game . But I'm very happy that design wise this is the only gripe - and maybe I'll be the only person to do such a hero design in the end, although that may be for a good reason . The Turtle hero is absolutely a wild card, though. I wanted to include him as a weird, long forgotten beast of the Stormreaver shores in place of a traditional warrior .

Ah, you're really in love with the Giant Turtle, eh? Well, as you say there's room in Wc3 for slightly off-beat racial Hero choices (while usually it's fantasy staples/racial archetypes like the Paladin or Far Seer or PotM, you also get the odd Blademaster (orcish samurai with ninja powers??) or Demon Hunter (night elven ninja with demon powers??). I myself (in my Trolls) feature a sort of 'thematically-niche' 4th Hero, despite my general proclivity to hit the archetypes.

So of course that just means you gotta swap out the orcish 'storm warrior' guy . Nothing really wrong with him, it's a cool idea (a rare Melee INT hero is quite cool, though thematically it's possibly a tiny bit... 'one-note'?), but I mean compared to this:

...there's no competition. Just tell me this isn't the superior life form.

 

[FlameofChange]

Hello there. Before I can do a full review there's some issues to fix ; but for the meantime here's some general remarks about your faction.
► Don't forget to change the map name in the lobby because it still has the default vanilla name. You should also specify in the description how to play the custom faction when downloading the map out of context.
► Shift ordering your peons while harvesting lumber do not cancel the finishing wood gathering and the orders are stuck
► Skeletal grunts can respawn on unfinished supply buildings, you should wait for them to be finished. The system also cannot be disabled and might feed too much enemy heroes, you cannot control when you want to disable them unless killing them yourself
► Ground-to-air abilities are also underwhelming. All faction should have a potent anti-air starting from Tier 1. Your necrolytes are corpse-dependent and their skeleton archers have too low impact ; assuming they live long enough to spawn them. Furthermore them not being counted as summon feeds even more enemy heroes on death. Late game spells just shatter them.
► Feedback level 2 fel stalker might be too strong early on, and the level 3 is a tad too tanky and intimidating ; why does it have mana ?
► Lightning Revenant AoE VFX is overwhelming. I would spawn lesser thunder effects nearby with some randomness.
► Checkout projectile launch X/Y/Z for better juice ; for example the necrolytes are shooting from their guts
► The turtle hatchling costs food ?!
► Embalm deals damage on the target ?!
► The tower in floating mode not having attack make them move into fights instead of staying at range. You might need to add them a ranged attack, even a shitty one so they stay at distance. You might also tweak the model so it doesn't turn itself while moving and that would look fancier.
► Being able to summon towers anywhere makes tower rushes quite broken. The tower itself is not but beware of this strategy. Maybe limit them when too close of enemy structures ? I don't have definite answers for that at the moment.
► Healing is borderline too harsh although that might be solved by some training. Be careful of the micromanagement load, also taking in consideration the numerous summoned units here and there.
► I cannot open the map to see how it's made, thus I cannot verify how the map is polished. It also fucks up my computer until I kill the process. Is this intended ?
► Main building costing the same as a Town Hall - compared to a Necropolis - nerfs a bit the economy of your faction. You might experiment cheaper cost, for example in between those two. Do not forget to also reduce the upgrade costs in consequence.
► The shop costing food puts deadweight on your upkeep. I would remove the food cost as the unit is (and should be) underwhelming, but you may keep the food cost just for the creation or even when it's on walk mode.

On the other hand the faction while not outrageously flashy has a lot to say. There's a clear core and strategical options and I have not seen anything broken or underwhelming. I would say the risks are actually too high for its 1.0 version since it's do or die. The early game is fine with the smoother creeping thanks to the skeletal grunt respawn. The wood gathering system is very smart as the summoner can be bullied. Most of the fixes are easy grabs, and I do think there's more to explore & experiment in the faction. This is a matter of testing it myself more.

 

[MogulKahn]

• While I undestand the logic of Mausoleum and Soul Tower's building models I feel they look unfitting next to other building skins. I know there would be an issue for a Soul Tower becase of an uproot mechanic, but at least I would change Mausoleum's skin or model
• They are various tooltip and hotkey mistakes
• I feel like Titan's Eye should be limited to one building per player
• Goliath needs a new icon for uproot and root
• Scourge and Harbinger should also get Skeletal?
• Harbinger's Chaos Bolt is extremely buggy. You can target your own building with it and if you target Harbinger itself with it, it will instantly kill the unit
• I know we spoke about this in race creation thread, and you were right that Faerie Dragon has no upgrade (To my surprise. By the way Batrider has a Liquid Fire upgrade) but still, I would give Harbinger some kind of an upgrade. You are missing dispel magic anyways.
• Champion's Death Grip spell is a 7 seconds stun?
• Some abilities are lagging game pretty significally like Leviathan's ultimate (it also should have some kind of indicator that it is a channeling spell) or Lightning Revnant's attack. Same issue
• Warlock's model feels too basic for a hero. I know who is he supposed to represent, but they are some models on this site that can fullfill the same job while still looking heroic
• Not a fan of Fel Hounds having Chaos attack on level 1. On level 3, maybe, but on level 1 it is too broken.

Overall, great job, really impressed with your race! I like the idea behind the race, the implementation, how unique it it is while still respecting the lore of this criminally underrepresented clan. Bravo!

 

[Wazzz]

• While I undestand the logic of Mausoleum and Soul Tower's building models I feel they look unfitting next to other building skins. I know there would be an issue for a Soul Tower becase of an uproot mechanic, but at least I would change Mausoleum's skin or model
• They are various tooltip and hotkey mistakes
• I feel like Titan's Eye should be limited to one building per player
• Goliath needs a new icon for uproot and root
• Scourge and Harbinger should also get Skeletal?
• Harbinger's Chaos Bolt is extremely buggy. You can target your own building with it and if you target Harbinger itself with it, it will instantly kill the unit
• I know we spoke about this in race creation thread, and you were right that Faerie Dragon has no upgrade (To my surprise. By the way Batrider has a Liquid Fire upgrade) but still, I would give Harbinger some kind of an upgrade. You are missing dispel magic anyways.
• Champion's Death Grip spell is a 7 seconds stun?
• Some abilities are lagging game pretty significally like Leviathan's ultimate (it also should have some kind of indicator that it is a channeling spell) or Lightning Revnant's attack. Same issue
• Warlock's model feels too basic for a hero. I know who is he supposed to represent, but they are some models on this site that can fullfill the same job while still looking heroic
• Not a fan of Fel Hounds having Chaos attack on level 1. On level 3, maybe, but on level 1 it is too broken.

Overall, great job, really impressed with your race! I like the idea behind the race, the implementation, how unique it it is while still respecting the lore of this criminally underrepresented clan. Bravo!

Thank you so much, I'm glad you like it! There's still a good amount of polish to be implemented that I'm currently working on (for example, the Scourge had an issue with causing lag spikes with its attack that took a bit of reworking the triggers to make it more CPU friendly), but I feel that the faction definitely puts forward the vision I intended for it and I'm glad that's coming through.

So one of the key areas I'm hoping to be able to address over the next two months (the contest is certainly really long - will we still have people requiring an extension?) is the visual aspects, so when it comes to some of the models like the Mausoleum and the Soul Tower, I'm hoping to get some minor tweaks to improve the visual cohesion. The same goes for unit models that currently don't have any designated portraits.

When you mention various tooltip and hotkey mistakes, do you have any specific examples please? I try to be vigilant with these, so I probably made some errors that would be like finding a needle in the haystack at this point, so any direction I can get on that is super helpful.

The Goliath absolutely does need a new icon! I'm not sure what visual I'll go for that yet, but I think there's some good options to explore around the hive.

So I'm looking at the Harbinger's Chaos Bolt, and I think I found out exactly why it's behaving that way - well, first of all, it shouldn't be able to target itself, but more to the point, it's sharing a hotkey with the Sacrifice ability (this must be one of those Hotkey errors you were talking about!), and as such it seems to be wanting to cast that on itself! I've tested this with manually clicking Chaos Bolt to target itself, and that behaves fine - but it shouldn't be allowed to do this, anyway.

So regarding the faction lacking a Dispel Magic ability, that's not entirely true - the Imp has it in the form of "Mana Leak". It's a bit of a different take on these types of abilities, where the damage it deals to enemy summoned units is dealt over time rather than burst damage, and it also drains the mana of enemy casters caught within the effects over time as well. Of course, it also dispels magical effects. As such, this likely won't be an instance of an upgrade added to the Harbinger (although, funnily enough, one of the concepts was having the Dispel Magic effect on the Harbinger before putting it on the Imp, so there's a bit of life imitating art there), but I am open to possibilities for upgrade potential. I likely won't add anything out of a sense of "need" since I don't perceive such a strong need, but if there's a compelling enough idea for an upgrade, then I'm all for it.

Death Grip at level 3... ohh yeah, it certainly does. Honestly, it's possibly balance, or it's possibly OP. Currently it goes 3/5/7 seconds immobilized, which might be overtuned with the DoT effect in contrast to the Crypt Lord's Impale, so it's possible it will see some revision over time. That being said, some of the balance for hero abilities does come from accessibility via mana cost in direct comparison to the hero's starting stats, and it has similar counterplay to Entangling Roots (including units being able to cast spells while immobilized and the effect being dispellable), so we'll see! Always open to balance tests.

That's a bit bizarre about the lag issues - I currently haven't had those myself in those specific areas, but I'll keep an eye on it and see if there's anything that can be done for it. Mostly I hope to see if it can be replicated - it could be something on the PC's end, but there could be something that I can do to make it perform better, too.

So the Chaos damage on the Felhounds I think is going to be an interesting area - in some respects it is quite a solid damage type since it has no weaknesses, but in others it's a bit of an underwhelming damage type because it has no strengths. Early game, a Spirit Wolf's Normal damage will deal bonus damage against any Medium Armor ranged units (150%), and the only damage reduction it has is against Fortified Armor (70%). So for Chaos damage, we're trading off that 150% bonus damage against an armor type most factions have in the early game, for a neutral damage roll against enemy bases. Add onto that the mana cost of Summon Felhounds (125 mana), and it's the sort of thing that might look strong on paper, but in practice the Chaos damage could be considered a nerf in all situations outside of sieging. That being said, I'm always open to being proven wrong, and there's a lot of nuance in PvP that is impossible to factor in a vacuum, so I'm always happy for people to play around with these strategies against each other and see how they go.

I'm very happy that the entry is getting such a positive reception, most of it was me having some goofy fun chucking different things together and seeing what felt "cool" at the time.
Thanks again!

 

[The Nightmare Book]

What can I say about your altered melee race, @Wazzz? I can only join the reviews of @MogulKahn, @FlamesOfChange, and @Kyrbi0.
And share my little showcase of your race gameplay.

In my opinion, adding a giant tortoise hero and a tortoise merchant shop is quite an odd decision.
It would be much cooler to make that hero as fel-infused undead turtle, keeping all abilities inactive with some flavor changes.

Overall, race felt strong. Maybe its because I've played it against normal AI, but the current design is quite strong for the early game already.

 

[Alexen98]

I do like the concept quite a lot.

• The workers summoning the drudges to harvest lumber is really nicely done;
• Skeletal Grunts could use a different sound set since the Mountain Giant one does not really fit them;
• The Goliath's portrait is missing (bad import maybe?); Having a mobile merchant is neat in so many situations, especially if you need a quick Town Portal Scroll when you have none left;
• The Stormcaller hero seems more of an Agility hero not an Intelligence based one; the attribute startup is also higher on Agility; His skillset is quite cool; the Stormsurge spell has the hotkey set on "H" which is the same as the "Hold Position" command (same thing for the Leviathan's Turtle Hatchlings ability);
• Soul Towers feel like they belong more to the naga race due to the texture they have; same goes for the Mausoleums;
• The Titan's Eye structure concept is awesome! Requires Hermits to power up its mana regeneration so that you can use the spells;
• Haunted Goldmine's tooltip mentions "Acolytes" instead of "Hermits", might wanna change that;
• Demonologists' Greater Summoning spell = SC Templars to Archons and it's awesome;
• The Imp's Torment ability can be cast on allied targets, that might not be intended I suppose;
• Skeletal Mauler does not have a portrait animation either;
• Lightning Revenant with the AoE attack is cool;

 

[Wazzz]

I do like the concept quite a lot.

• The workers summoning the drudges to harvest lumber is really nicely done;
• Skeletal Grunts could use a different sound set since the Mountain Giant one does not really fit them;
• The Goliath's portrait is missing (bad import maybe?); Having a mobile merchant is neat in so many situations, especially if you need a quick Town Portal Scroll when you have none left;
• The Stormcaller hero seems more of an Agility hero not an Intelligence based one; the attribute startup is also higher on Agility; His skillset is quite cool; the Stormsurge spell has the hotkey set on "H" which is the same as the "Hold Position" command (same thing for the Leviathan's Turtle Hatchlings ability);
• Soul Towers feel like they belong more to the naga race due to the texture they have; same goes for the Mausoleums;
• The Titan's Eye structure concept is awesome! Requires Hermits to power up its mana regeneration so that you can use the spells;
• Haunted Goldmine's tooltip mentions "Acolytes" instead of "Hermits", might wanna change that;
• Demonologists' Greater Summoning spell = SC Templars to Archons and it's awesome;
• The Imp's Torment ability can be cast on allied targets, that might not be intended I suppose;
• Skeletal Mauler does not have a portrait animation either;
• Lightning Revenant with the AoE attack is cool;

Thank you so much for the kind words

A few of these issues have been addressed previously but I have yet to update the map (such as the Soul Tower's and Mausoleum's appearances), but some of these tooltip and hotkey issues had slipped past my attention, so I'm very glad to have them pointed out to me

Currently I am not likely to update the map until the other faction I have been working on, the Satyrs, are playable within the faction. They may not receive the same amount of polish within the contest's timeframe, but I do hope they should provide a suitable playing experience nevertheless

 

[Alexen98]

Thank you so much for the kind words

A few of these issues have been addressed previously but I have yet to update the map (such as the Soul Tower's and Mausoleum's appearances), but some of these tooltip and hotkey issues had slipped past my attention, so I'm very glad to have them pointed out to me

Currently I am not likely to update the map until the other faction I have been working on, the Satyrs, are playable within the faction. They may not receive the same amount of polish within the contest's timeframe, but I do hope they should provide a suitable playing experience nevertheless

Don't give up on working on it! It has a lot of potential.

 

[Daffa]

I have played this faction earlier this month but I forgot to make a comment about it. It is an interesting take that I didn't expect to see coming

I liked the way there's a lot of methods to get more army into combat, giving better edge against enemies. Early on, for me, this faction plays both like Undead and Orc, with a twist of early summoning which makes firepower more aggressive than usual. I personally like Necrolyte and the way Skeletal Grunts can be revived continuously as long as there's one Summoning Pit available for them to revive.

I also love that global abilities is a part of this faction. Managing food for them while maintaining army can be a challenge, but they give good edge and can be very useful in a pinch like when heroes need quick healing.

 

[Wazzz]

I have played this faction earlier this month but I forgot to make a comment about it. It is an interesting take that I didn't expect to see coming

I liked the way there's a lot of methods to get more army into combat, giving better edge against enemies. Early on, for me, this faction plays both like Undead and Orc, with a twist of early summoning which makes firepower more aggressive than usual. I personally like Necrolyte and the way Skeletal Grunts can be revived continuously as long as there's one Summoning Pit available for them to revive.

I also love that global abilities is a part of this faction. Managing food for them while maintaining army can be a challenge, but they give good edge and can be very useful in a pinch like when heroes need quick healing.

Thank you so much, @Daffa! I'm glad you had fun with this, and I'm really loving the reception I've been receiving for the Titan's Eye design so far

It's awesome that you've been creating videos for the entries for this Techtree Contest, I recently saw your video playing the Critter's faction by Marchombe, and I look forward to seeing the others that are yet to come

 

[Daffa]

Satyrs:

1. I find this faction has quite interesting mechanics, though early game lackluster strength can be a challenge
2. The Corruption ability takes my favorite cake, I love how this faction has it. Balance wise, it favors against NE but I think it's a punishment if you let a caster sit there for 10 second trying to steal your building. Dude was nicer than my infiltrators stealing buildings without mercy.
3. Hellcaller first ability can be powerful later on with 300 damage and a long silence, probably slightly toned down on damage in line with Storm Bolt
4. Not sure if I'm seeing it wrong, but the healing ability of the satyr ranged hero probably centered on the hero instead of the target, or do I misinterpret it?
5. Game text for Trickster upgrade still in the game, probably left-over from testing
6. Rootling being removed for all buildings, but being selectable for some of them while under construction, is quite confusing
7. WHAT IS THIS, HIDDEN TECH TREE!? I love it! It can be quite a huge nuisance to acquire or outright impossible to get the hidden tech.

 

[Wazzz]

Satyrs:

1. I find this faction has quite interesting mechanics, though early game lackluster strength can be a challenge
2. The Corruption ability takes my favorite cake, I love how this faction has it. Balance wise, it favors against NE but I think it's a punishment if you let a caster sit there for 10 second trying to steal your building. Dude was nicer than my infiltrators stealing buildings without mercy.
3. Hellcaller first ability can be powerful later on with 300 damage and a long silence, probably slightly toned down on damage in line with Storm Bolt
4. Not sure if I'm seeing it wrong, but the healing ability of the satyr ranged hero probably centered on the hero instead of the target, or do I misinterpret it?
5. Game text for Trickster upgrade still in the game, probably left-over from testing
6. Rootling being removed for all buildings, but being selectable for some of them while under construction, is quite confusing
7. WHAT IS THIS, HIDDEN TECH TREE!? I love it! It can be quite a huge nuisance to acquire or outright impossible to get the hidden tech.

Oh my god, I thought I got all that debug text! I recently encountered a problem with it and was attempting to fix it in the last minute - however, replicating the issue was inconsistent despite being incredibly consistent at first, so I am not 100% certain if I did fix it, however I think I did factor in a possible scenario where the issue was happening. The text is leftover from that debugging (just ask @SgtWinter how often I leave debug text in by accident)

Oh yeah the Rootling being selectable for those structures is unfortunately something I cannot prevent, it is because I am not intending on the structures being Ancient, but to achieve the effect, the structure starts as Ancient but has the classification removed when it starts construction. I do wish there was a way to fine tune that little detail.

Honestly I would not be surprised if the Hellcaller's damage was a bit overtuned, so I'll dial it back a bit - 90/180/270 seems much more reasonable, I think!

You're absolutely right, it is around the Hero, intended as a utility surrounding the hero itself, so I'll update the tooltip to reflect that a bit better. Either that or I'll change it to heal around the target unit, the more I think about it, the more I think that could be more practical.

Absolutely, gotta put in the love for a hidden tech tree within the bonus techtree, even if it is a challenge to get (and hopefully rewarding to accomplish!)

Glad you like it! I find the lackluster strength early on is... hilarious if you go all out with swarming, but boy can it feed experience if you're not careful! It's definitely a different playstyle, hopefully an interesting one
But funnily enough, both the Stormreavers and the Satyrs fulfill a "Swarm" playstyle, just in very different ways

 

[The Nightmare Book]

I had played it against Insane Night Elf AI and got melted. Will replay the newest release and eventually share my humble satyr walkthrough. I like this "Zerg Infestation" you brought up here!

EDIT:
I thought that race is unbalanced and unplayable against others. It is. In a good way.

 

[Wazzz]

I had played it against Insane Night Elf AI and got melted. Will replay the newest release and eventually share my humble satyr walkthrough. I like this "Zerg Infestation" you brought up here!

EDIT:
I thought that race is unbalanced and unplayable against others. It is. In a good way.

That may be the best way to describe the faction, it is my attempt to make a Satyr faction that plays like it does in the campaign - poorly
But to make that fun and engaging, and give the tools that can make them successful, just in a... veery different way to what players might be used to

 

[MogulKahn]

• Non-Ancient structures should not kill your worker, same as Wisps
• Cesspool should get texture change from normal to corrupted trees
• Satyr should get another name. That is a race, not a title. Tauren had that issue also in the game. Like naming Peon - Orc
• Wasp should get some sound on the attack
• Dart should get some mana cost. Every ability should have some skill expression. Mana cost so you can work with mana management or some kind of negative thing attached to it (like Berserk), so you can juggle between negative and positive
• I would swap Resistant Skin to be innate ability while Arcane Hunger to be an upgrade
• Too many Satyr voicesets
• Defiler has two abilities with C hotkey
• Soul Rend auto-cast is buggy. It only works for the first time when you give attack order. You need to continue giving attack order for it to auto-cast
• There is no way to repair non-Ancient buildings?
• Plague Cloud doesn't work on Rootlings?
• Acid was already upgraded for Sludge Flinger before I upgraded it
• What kind of creature Devourer is supposed to represent in WoW universe?
• Rampage should cost more mana
• Nightmare should not be shouting "For Khaz Modan"
• Portal should have some indication that it is a channeling ability
• Broodmother has some tooltip issues with her spells

Overall, amazing desing. I was waiting for someone to make Satyr race. One of the OGs, but they have never gotten a love they deserve. Good job. I am liking it that you have taken all their units from the game, and gave them proper unique spells. I would just replace Soulstealer's model with some other model from the site, he looks a little bit funky and there are plenty other Satyr models on the site that use different set of animations.

 

[Wazzz]

• Non-Ancient structures should not kill your worker, same as Wisps
• Cesspool should get texture change from normal to corrupted trees
• Satyr should get another name. That is a race, not a title. Tauren had that issue also in the game. Like naming Peon - Orc
• Wasp should get some sound on the attack
• Dart should get some mana cost. Every ability should have some skill expression. Mana cost so you can work with mana management or some kind of negative thing attached to it (like Berserk), so you can juggle between negative and positive
• I would swap Resistant Skin to be innate ability while Arcane Hunger to be an upgrade
• Too many Satyr voicesets
• Defiler has two abilities with C hotkey
• Soul Rend auto-cast is buggy. It only works for the first time when you give attack order. You need to continue giving attack order for it to auto-cast
• There is no way to repair non-Ancient buildings?
• Plague Cloud doesn't work on Rootlings?
• Acid was already upgraded for Sludge Flinger before I upgraded it
• What kind of creature Devourer is supposed to represent in WoW universe?
• Rampage should cost more mana
• Nightmare should not be shouting "For Khaz Modan"
• Portal should have some indication that it is a channeling ability
• Broodmother has some tooltip issues with her spells

Overall, amazing desing. I was waiting for someone to make Satyr race. One of the OGs, but they have never gotten a love they deserve. Good job. I am liking it that you have taken all their units from the game, and gave them proper unique spells. I would just replace Soulstealer's model with some other model from the site, he looks a little bit funky and there are plenty other Satyr models on the site that use different set of animations.

Thank you so much for the kind words, and the very extensive problem hunting
A lot of these ended up being silly errors on my part - for example, Acid just didn't have the requirement, even though mechanically it won't function without the upgrade, and the Rootlings I actually forgot to give them the ability they needed in the first place to even have their Death Cloud effect.
That's interesting about Soul Rend, I've just tested it and it seems work fine, but I did find that I forgot to set the duration for Level 1 of the ability back to default since I was testing it before. I actually had it set to 1 second, which meant that the Husks would be created and die one second after, so not super ideal. With the upgrade it's 100 seconds, so a bit of a boost
I think Rampage is an interesting one, it's based off the Alchemist's "Chemical Rage" ability, which in that case costs very little mana, but this is on a hero without passives, so Chemical Rage is perhaps the closest they had to a passive... I think yeah, it should cost a little more, maybe somewhere between 50-75 mana sounds good.
God yeah Nightmares playing that sound... I don't remember how or why I had that put in there, but I saw it recently when testing and for whatever reason my reaction was to leave it like that
Funnily enough, the Rootling's ability was meant to work on all structures, so I think I made an error in the targeting. Testing it out now to see if I've fixed it.

So some changes I might not make, mostly looking at the ones based off preferences, and that's fine because in that sense it does follow the Blizzard convention with naming, for example, or the Rootlings being sacrificed for all buildings, this is by design of the faction and it's part of the reason why Rootlings are hired instantly - they're very expendable. I actually had a mechanic initially to make it you could hire them while training at the same time, but the issue with that is I can't have hotkeys when using that system. Sort of found it better to do it this way so the hotkey could exist, but I do wish I could have my cake and eat it, too.
For the things I will be updating, however, it may be some time before I can update the upload here due to the rules of the contest dictating that if I do update this, I will receive a 1% malus, which quite frankly I don't need for a faction that isn't even being judged on in the contest (and while I could make the argument that's the only faction I am editing, there's no real way to confirm this from the judge's perspective, so the rules are there for a reason).

But I do hope to chip away at polishing these factions a little bit more over time (currently the Stormreavers are pretty close to exactly where I want them to be with recent updates, maybe just a couple of graphical tweaks in the future, one that actually comes to mind - the Satyrs are far less polished at the moment), and release the update some time after the results for the Contest come out

P.S. I totally agree that the Satyrs never receive the love they deserve. I did do them a good service in my Corrupted Ancients faction, but quite frankly, I feel like I have outdone myself with this more recent rendition, which was always the goal. Not content to rest on that alone, though, so there will be polish!

 

[MogulKahn]

Yea, Huks were dying extremely fast, but I thought it was intented that way, not to spam too many Soulstealers at the beginning.

I would also rename (and maybe reskin) Blight into Defile or something like that. It is more fitting for Satyrs and I feel blight is more of an Undead thing.
Also, I would replace Devourer model with corrupted Green Dragon. Current one looks strange.

 

[Kyrbi0]

P.S. I totally agree that the Satyrs never receive the love they deserve. I did do them a good service in my Corrupted Ancients faction, but quite frankly, I feel like I have outdone myself with this more recent rendition, which was always the goal. Not content to rest on that alone, though, so there will be polish!

I have been meaning to ask which of your two Satyr factions you consider the "best" one, or if they are both different good takes on the same premise.

(inb4 I still haven't tried out your original Satyrs yet, despite my excitement to )

 

[Wazzz]

I have been meaning to ask which of your two Satyr factions you consider the "best" one, or if they are both different good takes on the same premise.

(inb4 I still haven't tried out your original Satyrs yet, despite my excitement to )

I definitely think this more recent one is the better one - unfortunately, I've found some technical issues with my older one, too, as the UI has been misbehaving and I'm not certain how to fix it. If I can fix it, I'd like to advocate checking that one out as a bit of a preamble, as that was geared to being more directly faithful to the Campaign representation, but to an obssessive extent.

I think the more recent one does achieve faithfulness to the Campaign representation, too, but manages to deviate itself to presenting more as a "5th Race" style premise by taking the creativity further and really leaning into developing its own style. However, some of the concepts that were already good in the original found their way back into the new Satyrs, such as the Soulstealer design being almost identical (the main difference being instead of summoning Skeleton Warriors, it summons Husks, in addition to getting a couple of upgrades to play around with )

 

[The Nightmare Book]

I had played it against Insane Night Elf AI and got melted. Will replay the newest release and eventually share my humble satyr walkthrough. I like this "Zerg Infestation" you brought up here!

EDIT:
I thought that race is unbalanced and unplayable against others. It is. In a good way.

In short, I've played both of your Corrupted Ancients race implementations (sorry, got to fix the previous Corrupted Ancient myself ), and I like this version more, although I've enjoyed (somewhat) heroes from the previous implementation.
Especially, I enjoy this "Zerg Meets Warcraft" mechanic - infestation from Starcraft 1. Hiding the additional building types inside this mere missable ability is quite vile. Satyrishly!

Recommend this race simply because of this small, silly mechanic. Zerg SC1 Queen meeting Satyrs was not on my bingo chart for Warcraft 2026 Bingo.
Like, again.

 

[Wazzz]

In short, I've played both of your Corrupted Ancients race implementations (sorry, got to fix the previous Corrupted Ancient myself ), and I like this version more, although I've enjoyed (somewhat) heroes from the previous implementation.
Especially, I enjoy this "Zerg Meets Warcraft" mechanic - infestation from Starcraft 1. Hiding the additional building types inside this mere missable ability is quite vile. Satyrishly!

Recommend this race simply because of this small, silly mechanic. Zerg SC1 Queen meeting Satyrs was not on my bingo chart for Warcraft 2026 Bingo.
Like, again.

I'm glad you liked it! I especially loved including those extra buildings as a bonus for people wanting to explore the mechanics of that spell
I think it's just really fun when games reward exploration

 

[harrytsab]

Hey, tried this map for a bit, pretty good design, but it feels like the satyrs are way too slow with their eco and long term their gold is super taxed
Stormreavers feel op with all their summoning and titan's eye in comparison

 

[Wazzz]

Hey, tried this map for a bit, pretty good design, but it feels like the satyrs are way too slow with their eco and long term their gold is super taxed
Stormreavers feel op with all their summoning and titan's eye in comparison

Thanks for checking it out! I'm definitely sure there will be balance issues to address over time, but if it starts out as fun for now, then I'm very happy for that starting point

Funnily enough, I think I have felt the opposite at times where the early game armies for the Stormreavers, while they do well against creeps, could have potential difficulty against the melee factions, while the Satyrs do start out weak but come in such high numbers that I've found they play really well for mass-expansion. I'm definitely curious to see more games, so I can get an idea of where the Satyrs may be on the slower side and the Stormreavers may be on the OP side

 

[harrytsab]

Thanks for checking it out! I'm definitely sure there will be balance issues to address over time, but if it starts out as fun for now, then I'm very happy for that starting point

That's useful to know about the Satyrs feeling taxed on gold in the long term, as well as their slower pace. Funnily enough, I think I have had the opposite experience. The Stormreaver armies do well against creeps, but I did find they sometimes have difficulty against the melee factions early on, while the Satyrs do start out weak but come in such high numbers that I've found they play really well for mass-expansion. I'm definitely curious to see more games, so I can get an idea of where the Satyrs may be on the slower side and the Stormreavers may be on the OP side

Both have some interesting concepts that could be seen as abusable if left unchecked. But if you want the satyrs to have a zerg like macro opening of sorts, the simple solution is to reduce the cost of the saplings by 10 and allow the tree to keep up to two charges of saplings (so that when you make satyr lumberjacks early with your tree you dont lose uptime on the 'sapling generation rate') or something along those lines. Alternatively reduce the cost and build time of trees!

The concept of the titan eye's seems absurd to me (with its current abilities at least). Especially the xp and heal unit mechanics (not that the others arent strong). If you expand and get a goblin shredder quickly, you can still have a titan's eye with 5 hermits charging it up for absurd full map utility of all sorts. For some reason their ccs also are super cheap while producing the workers that gather both gold and lumber (unlike necropolis which only makes acolytes)

I really like the skeleton respawn thing that sreavers have and the summon doom lord by combining two demonologists.

(Edit: do satyr units benefit from increased blight hp regen? Didnt seem like it. Another early issue is that the cesspool is too gold expensive and takes a bit too long to build for how crucial it is to enable ranged units in terms of gold at least. I would rather you alleviated early gold issues and compensated it by having larger wood demands forcing people to use more lumberjacks instead)

(2nd edit: after playing a few games and improving my early macro/BO, I found out its not too bad, but early creeping and fights are still brutal. That being said they are far stronger later in the game if you get away with it even against UD)

 

[Wazzz]

Both have some interesting concepts that could be seen as abusable if left unchecked. But if you want the satyrs to have a zerg like macro opening of sorts, the simple solution is to reduce the cost of the saplings by 10 and allow the tree to keep up to two charges of saplings (so that when you make satyr lumberjacks early with your tree you dont lose uptime on the 'sapling generation rate') or something along those lines. Alternatively reduce the cost and build time of trees!

The concept of the titan eye's seems absurd to me (with its current abilities at least). Especially the xp and heal unit mechanics (not that the others arent strong). If you expand and get a goblin shredder quickly, you can still have a titan's eye with 5 hermits charging it up for absurd full map utility of all sorts. For some reason their ccs also are super cheap while producing the workers that gather both gold and lumber (unlike necropolis which only makes acolytes)

I really like the skeleton respawn thing that sreavers have and the summon doom lord by combining two demonologists.

(Edit: do satyr units benefit from increased blight hp regen? Didnt seem like it. Another early issue is that the cesspool is too gold expensive and takes a bit too long to build for how crucial it is to enable ranged units in terms of gold at least. I would rather you alleviated early gold issues and compensated it by having larger wood demands forcing people to use more lumberjacks instead)

(2nd edit: after playing a few games and improving my early macro/BO, I found out its not too bad, but early creeping and fights are still brutal. That being said they are far stronger later in the game if you get away with it even against UD)

These are some really solid solutions! I have at times thought that the Rootling may be expensive for what it is, but set it to what it was as a starting point. I did also consider if it should have more than one charge, for the same reasons you have cited just there. Originally, I had it set up that you could spawn the Rootlings while training Satyrs or doing other researches, but that came at the cost of it having a hotkey (with the exception of people playing with Grid Hotkeys), so I made a conscious choice to go back to this way. I am inclined to agree that slightly cheaper Rootlings + having an extra charge will relieve some of the early game min-maxing pressure. I have actually tried juggling the Satyr and Rootling production myself, and while I can sort of get a decent flow, it does sort of restrict some access.

Honestly what you're saying about the Cesspool makes so much sense, too. So, originally I have been treating it like a War Mill type of structure, but what's really interesting about it is you can actually go for the Cesspool first instead of going Ancient of Massacre first. So I'm thinking, based on that, it could maybe cost something like 60 lumber and 160-180 gold, something around there. Possibly up to about 75 lumber, but starting at 60 means you have the option of opening Cesspool first still while it is less gold heavy.

That's really interesting about the Titan's Eye being that abusable. I think the direction I'd like to take it at the moment is give the opportunity for more counterplay to its abilities, perhaps, or just make it more difficult to access. What you've pointed out about the CC being so quick is a good point as well. It's this strange sort of middleground that I was aiming for where it's not quite as valuable as the Great Hall, but maybe it's more valuable than the Necropolis. In this case I went for that since it doesn't provide any defenses like the Necropolis can when upgraded, but it might be worth looking at to see if that presents a problem. One counterplay option I did include, for example, was that the spell that does provide experience over time does get cancelled if the affected hero takes damage. Of course, if the Stormreavers player is turtling up, then it's less likely that they will take that damage. But I would love to see it getting abused, especially if I can identify anything that makes it potentially un-fun to play against

So Satyr units don't benefit from increased blight regen hp regen, although the Corrupted Ancients do regenerate while on blight. There's a few other mechanics involving blight that I have integrated, such as the Corrupted Ancients building faster while on blight, and they can move faster when uprooted. Then there's also the Blightmeld ability, but I think that one is probably already under your radar

(2nd edit: after playing a few games and improving my early macro/BO, I found out its not too bad, but early creeping and fights are still brutal. That being said they are far stronger later in the game if you get away with it even against UD)

Oh yeah, it's absolutely the kind of thing where these dynamics are going to be very different to anything in melee, so on some levels the balance is going to be very hit or miss, hopefully more hits than misses, but time will tell

Also I'm very glad that you like the skeleton spawning for the Hermits and the Daemonologist's approach to summoning Daemons. Honestly the latter is probably my favourite gimmick from the Stormreavers faction! I especially wanted the design to feel like it could be at home in melee Warcraft 3 while presenting something new (while combining a few different ingame concepts, which somebody else has pointed out on thread )

 

[harrytsab]

I found out that going for tavern hero first (to alleviate early macro issues) helps a lot (but you dont have to, I just think it lines up macro and early gold better). I am glad we agree on some of these conceptual balance things if nothing else. I have also managed to haunt one ancient (ancient of wind into ancient of shadow horrors with nether drake) but I wonder, can you haunt a tree of life from nelves and it will turn into a tree of suffering (satyr tree?) Or is there an actual full alternative corrupted nelf tech tree? Will have to haunt all of them and check it out. Ritual dagger for satyrs would be nice, but at that point it feels like both reavers/satyrs will have a shop that's too similar to the undead (and thematically/stylistically/mechanic wise they already are quite a bit) (mobile shop mechanic for reavers feels broken, at least it costs supply which is good)

When it comes to creeping, the map (twisted meadows) doesnt help satyrs much (or at all) because there are either too many ogre camps/dispel/golems. Not enough low lvl camps for them to make it a bit easier (like echo isles for example with murlocs and limited dispel/golems) so you are legit better off either with fast teching as cheaply as possible (think 2 farms human, 1 burrow no rax orc, 1 zig ud) or going for neutral hero.

(Edit: melee units with normal armor is kinda rough, turning them into ranged units with piercing but unarmored is also very rough lol. Would rather the satyr (both forms) got slightly reduced hp but more fitting armor types and armor rating)

 

[Wazzz]

You absolutely can "corrupt" every Night Elf Ancient, and I encourage playing around with that as much as you can

Yep, that's right! The Medium and Unarmored armor types are very intentional for shifting the early game dynamic, where the base melee unit performs remarkably well against early game ranged units due to doing bonus damage against Medium Armor and reduced damage from Pierce, while the Unarmored is considered an improvement over Small armor, which I know it's not necessarily what is typical for base melee factions, but I liked taking things in a different direction for these guys. Besides which, I would have a lot of difficulty accepting the Satyr as having Heavy armor

For the Satyrs, it's at tier 2 that they get the kinds of units that fulfill the roles you typically see filled at tier 1 and 1.5, so it's an intentional switch-up to give the Satyrs a more aggressive swarm playstyle in the early game that lets them creep aggressively (taking losses with the early Satyr units isn't super punishing, after all, although obviously the more you can keep alive, the better), engaging in fast expansion tactics to transition to a solid mid-game with some better units. In many respects, it strives to incentivize playing them a bit like how they are represented in the campaign, where they start by sending waves of the weaker units, only to transition to the more powerful creep variants.

That's a really good point about the map's creep camps, too! I think at some point I would like to transfer these factions to other melee maps, which would likely change some of the dynamics. Funnily enough, the Stone Golems are such a tough opponent for the Stormreavers if you're wanting to go heavy on the Necrolytes

 

[harrytsab]

I think the combination of both golems and high priests is insane. It makes them camps last way too long which disfavors fragile creeping armies. The satyrs do have summoning methods ofc and they can afford to lose a satyr, but the real issue is that they dont even really have high damage (unlike militia/ghouls) which prolongs the camps even more. The fact that they dont benefit from blight regen and they mostly rely on 'statue' wells that you cannot really permanently build around the trees for example (cause unlike nelves, satyrs do cut trees so it either causes blocking or simply they will move the treeline away from the wells, well technically you could start building the wells closer again but then you also end up blocking the tree harvesting anyway)

It really feels like some Qol framework for the whole race is lacking, compared to storm reavers who have all the good macro related bonuses of the undead with no real handicap as well as decent early support/qol mechanics overall (free corpses, respawning grunts, permanent skellies, a better rax for t1/early t2 etc)

i will say that the ability of satyr ancients to be built, moved and spread blight everywhere is super convenient, probably one of the good things they have going for them, but honestly it seems that it mostly just benefits ud allies than themselves.
However, if you do leave them unmolested on a map like echo isles, frozen marshlands, autumn leaves, snowfall, northern isles, lost temple etc.... with easily cleared and defendable expo locations, they will become monsters. Their mid/late game power is insane, it's like a high tier combo of humans/ud in terms of playstyle, but suffering from an even harsher penalty of 'humans not being able to play on 1 base' thing.

Slightly cheaper satyrs (80g>75g) cheaper roots (60g>50g) and with the ability to stack 2 charges of the roots at the trees [would also be nice if the t2 and t3 tree versions could stack 3/4 roots maximum respectively] to improve early eco should enable this zergy/ud/corrupted nelf vibe to the full without breaking them for sure.

 

[Wazzz]

That's a really good idea, actually - also, you would be right in determining the Stormreavers have much more polish than the Satyrs currently do, and in that sense I do especially look at some of the visual elements for that as well.

So the reason I went with 80 gold for the Satyrs initially was probably a really flawed premise to begin with. Previously, I made a similar "Corrupted Ancients" faction, but in this one the Satyrs were also the gold harvesters, using Haunted Gold Mine mechanics on a Corrupted Entangled Gold Mine. In that sense, they were more potent than the average worker, and so they were made to cost... I think 90 gold in that project.
Moving from that, though, I did go with 80 gold since I had it in my head still that it needed to cost more than the average worker, but I think adjusting it to 75 gold does sound like a good idea. That and being able to be less optimize with getting out the Rootlings could be very beneficial (initially, I was considering they might be able to store up to three Rootling charges, then later I considered there being an upgrade to enable that, although the latter would be harder to implement and wouldn't feel that meaningful).

It's definitely something I'll be looking at revisiting. Initially, the Stormreavers economy was actually much worse, since the Drudges summoned by Hermits to harvest lumber would die instantly as soon as the Hermit received another order. This tanked the lumber economy really hard, so I'm definitely on board with these sorts of optimisations to make the gameplay more fluid

I am curious - are you playtesting these guys against AI, or have you been able to get PvP experience with them as well? Honestly the data for both instances are currently a little lacking, but I do have to acknowledge that AI is much more exploitable than human opponents

 

[harrytsab]

That's a really good idea, actually - also, you would be right in determining the Stormreavers have much more polish than the Satyrs currently do, and in that sense I do especially look at some of the visual elements for that as well.

So the reason I went with 80 gold for the Satyrs initially was probably a really flawed premise to begin with. Previously, I made a similar "Corrupted Ancients" faction, but in this one the Satyrs were also the gold harvesters, using Haunted Gold Mine mechanics on a Corrupted Entangled Gold Mine. In that sense, they were more potent than the average worker, and so they were made to cost... I think 90 gold in that project.
Moving from that, though, I did go with 80 gold since I had it in my head still that it needed to cost more than the average worker, but I think adjusting it to 75 gold does sound like a good idea. That and being able to be less optimize with getting out the Rootlings could be very beneficial (initially, I was considering they might be able to store up to three Rootling charges, then later I considered there being an upgrade to enable that, although the latter would be harder to implement and wouldn't feel that meaningful).

It's definitely something I'll be looking at revisiting. Initially, the Stormreavers economy was actually much worse, since the Drudges summoned by Hermits to harvest lumber would die instantly as soon as the Hermit received another order. This tanked the lumber economy really hard, so I'm definitely on board with these sorts of optimisations to make the gameplay more fluid

I am curious - are you playtesting these guys against AI, or have you been able to get PvP experience with them as well? Honestly the data for both instances are currently a little lacking, but I do have to acknowledge that AI is much more exploitable than human opponents

Mostly against ai cause against other people it feels that satyrs at least are very weak while storm Reavers feel always strong in contrast

 

[Wazzz]

I remember in PvP for my old Corrupted Ancients, the Satyrs got obliterated by Frost Novas, honestly probably similar to what could happen for these guys haha

Honestly, though, all data I can get is good data, and I'd love to see how people go with playing these factions against the melee ones, or against each other, and against AI can also be informative

For anyone who is interested, the poll for Techtree Contest 20 is now up, and everybody is welcome to come and cast their votes!

Techtree Contest 20 Poll

 

[harrytsab]

Perhaps one final note/idea on early game satyrs: give them 4 roots and 1 satyr lumberjack at the start. Seems reasonable as well