Units that need a buff for single player experience?

[Blahblah_Blagar]

Hi

I'm currently working on a custom campaign based around the vanilla factions and since I'm doing some QoL and minor balance changes to make the campaign more fun, I've been wondering which units could use some buffs? Bear in mind since this is a singleplayer experience, strict balance doesn't play as big of a role as pure fun. Also, the player will have access to most of the units from the get go, so 1st tier units pale in comparison to others. Lastly, some of the units such as bat riders or dryads are based around movement control which doesn't play as big of a role in the campaigns.

I'm asking for things such as decreasing the Spellbreakers control magic mana cost, making Death and Decay target only enemy units, increasing the damage of Mountain Giants war club attack or even making the wisps cost no money

Of course, nerfs could help too

 

[cleavinghammer]

Campaign missions are usually set up so that the new unit introduced in the level has time to shine. For instance, Talon druids in a level where you need to neutralize individual enemies. If you buff the units' abilities you'll probably want to make sure the level has plenty of chances to use these abilities (e.g. for Spell Breakers with cheaper Control Magic, have enemies that use lots of summons; Invisibility on a stealth level, etc).

Or you could give the spells a second effect instead of just stat changes. Lightning Shield that moves the target faster, Invisibility that gives the Wind Walk backstab, etc.)

 

[Armelior_is_back]

Not exactly a nerf but I think the orc shaman should be changed : fully upgraded it is God-Tier because blood frenzy is the best autocast buff in the game by far, but before they're near-useless because purge is the worst dispel in the game, by far again, and lightning shield is so situational/hard to use (both for player and AI). I NEVER train any shaman if I can't reach lvl 3 spellcaster.

If it's campaign only, you could change the invisibility spell from the sorceress and maybe the 1st ward of the witchdoctor - unless scouting is important in your campaign

• spellbreaker yeah control magic is way too costly if you take a good summon
• death and decay is fine IMO because it's way better than Earthquake/volcano/stampede (and I'm probably forgetting others) to destroy enemy bases so doing friendly fire is a good balance
• mountain giants are mostly tank so I don't know, you also have the chimeras as siege units
• wisps : does anyone ever use their suicide dispel ?
• speaking of workers, orcs need something for the peons sucking at cutting trees

Do you plan to do Nagas too ? I thiiink... maybe.... they could use a bit of nerfing

 

[noob]

Hi

I'm currently working on a custom campaign based around the vanilla factions and since I'm doing some QoL and minor balance changes to make the campaign more fun, I've been wondering which units could use some buffs? Bear in mind since this is a singleplayer experience, strict balance doesn't play as big of a role as pure fun. Also, the player will have access to most of the units from the get go, so 1st tier units pale in comparison to others. Lastly, some of the units such as bat riders or dryads are based around movement control which doesn't play as big of a role in the campaigns.

I'm asking for things such as decreasing the Spellbreakers control magic mana cost, making Death and Decay target only enemy units, increasing the damage of Mountain Giants war club attack or even making the wisps cost no money

Of course, nerfs could help too

Free wisps are ridiculously powerful: you would basically always want to get one in your army for opponent spellcaster suppression.
Movement control is strong in the campaign if you have the micro to use it properly(lots of opponents are in melee and will block each other if the frontline ones are hit so you can kite a bit if you have slowing abilities and you can give more time for your ranged units to fire).
Also dryads are strong in absolute even without the movement control: dryads are one of the toughest night elf units and only the bears, chimeras and mountain giants are tougher.(while technically there is other units with more hp than dryads, the magic immunity is a strong boost to survivability)

 

[Blahblah_Blagar]

Or you could give the spells a second effect instead of just stat changes. Lightning Shield that moves the target faster, Invisibility that gives the Wind Walk backstab, etc.)

I'm really against making spells too convoluted. Whenever I cast a death coil, I simply want to heal my unit or damage enemy's. "deal 50 damage +25% damage of the hp left, additionaly the unit gets a damage over time debuff. If it dies from this effect, it gets transformed into a summon with a critical strike ability and explodes upon death" don't feel intuitive to me

Not exactly a nerf but I think the orc shaman should be changed : fully upgraded it is God-Tier because blood frenzy is the best autocast buff in the game by far, but before they're near-useless because purge is the worst dispel in the game, by far again, and lightning shield is so situational/hard to use (both for player and AI). I NEVER train any shaman if I can't reach lvl 3 spellcaster.

If it's campaign only, you could change the invisibility spell from the sorceress and maybe the 1st ward of the witchdoctor - unless scouting is important in your campaign

Thank God, I wasn't the only one always delaying with the shamans til I get the mastery level on them - Purge is autocastable (as is ensnare which I'm really proud of) and costs much less mana now. I don't really want to nerf iconic things, but yeah, I was thinking about at least increasing the mana cost of Frenzy.

I was going to replace the invisibility, but I'm already running out of balanced ideas for fun to use (and easy enough for me to make lol) spells for both new heroes and units. The 1st level ward is staying though, as one of the new units has an almost permament invisibility and there's also going to be a somewhat skirmish-y mission for the orcs.

• death and decay is fine IMO because it's way better than Earthquake/volcano/stampede (and I'm probably forgetting others) to destroy enemy bases so doing friendly fire is a good balance
• mountain giants are mostly tank so I don't know, you also have the chimeras as siege units
• wisps : does anyone ever use their suicide dispel ?
• speaking of workers, orcs need something for the peons sucking at cutting trees

Do you plan to do Nagas too ? I thiiink... maybe.... they could use a bit of nerfing

The reason I want to make DaD not deal friendly fire is mostly to make it more versatile (and not just an UD Earthquake), especially since Archmage already has a much more effective AoE damage spell, which not only costs much less mana, but if I remember correctly has an almost immediate cooldown too. I just don't think Ultis should deal friendly fire

Mountain Giants are great as they are and I don't want to turn them into damage dealers. I just want to make the warclub more effective, given I never even notice the results of using them.

More about wisps later on

I was actaully thinking (right now just thinking) about going in a completely different direction with peons. Given orcs are an agressive race in their concept, I was thinking about giving them the siege attack type, slightly buffing their (and just their) pillage skill and make them benefit from the warmill upgrades. Thus, the peons would become slightly more offensive and maybe even could support the demolishers during the battle. While this sounds somewhat complicated here, in the game itself the change would be very subtle - their stats icons would simply look a bit different.

I don't really want to touch the nagas, as they represent perfect harmony. They are really, really fun to fight against and are almost completely balanced. As a fun anegdote, whenever I replay Tft, I extract the campaign levels from the mpq files and add a couple of extra Naga Royal Guards to each one of them

Thanks a lot man, as feedback such as this is really useful

Free wisps are ridiculously powerful: you would basically always want to get one in your army for opponent spellcaster suppression.
Movement control is strong in the campaign if you have the micro to use it properly(lots of opponents are in melee and will block each other if the frontline ones are hit so you can kite a bit if you have slowing abilities and you can give more time for your ranged units to fire).
Also dryads are strong in absolute even without the movement control: dryads are one of the toughest night elf units and only the bears, chimeras and mountain giants are tougher.(while technically there is other units with more hp than dryads, the magic immunity is a strong boost to survivability)

That's exactly the idea with the wisps. NE dispell is horrible compared to Orc Spirit Walkers, UD Destoryers or Human Priests. Compare the movement control in the campaign, where you'll do a bit more damage to units that will immediately get replaced, to the skirmishes where you'll pick off extremly valuable units as the enemy tries to flee. Dryads don't gain much survivability from their magic immunity, as even a single archer will almost completely drain their HP off (I think an upgraded archer will kill a dryad too)

 

[Armelior_is_back]

OK I've reviewed every vanilla unit in the editor to be thorough so wall of text incoming :

every race
I really don't like the siege units in warcraft3, mostly because they're really good at killing buildings yes, but in practice they're almost as good at killing you own melee units so you have to babysit them 100% of the time AND they're slow AND the enemy AI likes to snipe them AND you can't heal them with spells
the only exceptions are the steam tanks because they're specialized (so no friendly fire) and tanky (maybe even too much) and the meat wagons because providing corpses is really good both for gameplay and thematic reasons (but they destroy corpses when they attack because siege units)
It's probably just me but I wanted to rant


humans

-gyrocopter : currently useless except maybe for scouting, just replace it by the RoC version
-sorceress : maybe it's just me but I rarely use polymorph because it's super expensive, it would be more useful at reduced cost and duration so less powerful
-farms are the only food building with no other purpose AND they're crappy at that : you need sooooo many of them to cap to 100 - I have no idea what could make them more interesting though -maybe upgrade them instead of building another one each time ? some players like to make walls of farms but it seems stupid to me with the splash damage of siege units
-blood mage : will you make the siphon mana able to give mana to allies ?


orcs

-making peons an attack unit like ghouls would mean changing all their stats to be viable : damage, speed of attack, speed of movement too - otherwise taking them to assault bases will make them a liability, so I'm not too sure it's a good idea, but I really like the principle thematic-wise
-raiders : making ensnare autocast is great, but if you have dragons (or other high level flying enemies) in your campaign please make it last longer than in vanilla on them
-kodo beasts : maybe make them walk faster because it's painful seeing them try to devour any unit that's not in arm's reach, but you can't change the pathfinding
-shaman : purge gets autocast both on enemies and allies ? what spell did you based it on, I'm curious
-spirit walker : on paper they seem maybe overpowered ? never played a custom campaign with them being buildable so I'm not sure
-farseer : replace farsight or at least make it last a bit, as an alternative to the lvl1 of witchdoctors
-shadowhunter : maybe overpowered ? in Rexxar campaign he's definitely the MVP
with the healing, spamming snake totems and hexes + being AGI-based - the ultimate seems hard to use unless you cheese by using an invincibility potion at the same time


undead

-crypt fiends : same as ensnare
-banshee : make antimagic shield more useful somehow ?
-destroyer : maybe overpowered on paper but the AI tends to snipe them and they're very expensive so I don't know
-crypt lord is the strongest melee hero stats-wise IIRC and all his abilities are great but is he OP are the other ones lacking ?


nightelves

-hippogryph riders are too expensive for a flying, barely more durable archer IMO
-druid of talon : I don't like that cyclone last so damn long and you have to wait or dispel long after you cleaned up the other units
-priestess of the moon : replace the owl spell ? or make it more like the eagle from the beastmaster : first scout, then can also attack

 

[noob]

You know siege units deal splash to buildings only when using the "attack ground" command and that the ai never uses it?
This is because each splash siege unit have 2 attacks, one single target attack it uses against buildings only and one splash attack it uses against any non building unit and when given the order to attack a ground zone, this is so that you do not kill your own units while attacking a tower with both melee units and siege units.
So it means that in practice placing farms near each other will not make them take splash from the ai.
The crypt lord have strong stats but is a str based hero meaning he does not scales as great with items as an agility based hero (Campaigns generally gives more items than melee) and in terms of spells, the mountain king is better than the crypt lord (even his passive is superior).

 

[Armelior_is_back]

I don't know if I should trust the explanations of a noob
More seriously I didn't know what the 2 different types of attack for siege units in the editor were, so thanks - I still don't like having to spam farms

The mountain king is a sniper and avatar is one of the best ultis, but is he better overall ? Having 5 pretty good permanent summons and an AoE life drain is also pretty sweet. The passive stun of the dwarf is of course great but his attack is slow so it doesn't happen that often, when most passives work 100% of the time. His AoE stun is probably easier to use than the one from the bug, I suppose. The Bug Lord also hits like a truck and I think his attack speed is one of the fastest for STR heroes (with rexxar maybe ?)

 

[noob]

His base attack rate is 1.9s per attack and he gets less agility than the dread lord(who have a base attack rate of 1.8) until late levels at which point he only have 1 point less.The only str melee hero that hits faster than him is another undead hero. (not so surprising when undead is the only faction with 3 str heroes unless you count neutral in)
The beast lord however had an enormous base cooldown of 2.2(rexxar might have less but he is a campaign hero) and only 1 more agility than the crypt lord.