Warcraft 3 Beta Update #10 -- Huntresses in All Their Imbalanced Glory (03-20-02)
Huntresses are an interesting unit. They are a melee unit, yet they are not. They basically satisfy the melee role as
do the grunt, footman and ghoul units, but they have several advantages. Players have been learning these advantages,
and abusing them badly and to an extent greater than one would normally anticipate. Because of this unit's power,
very few top Night Elf players use other units much at all, and additionally, Orcs and Humans have extreme difficulty defeating a Night Elf player of similar skill.
The goal of this article is to lay out on the table what I feel are the contributing factors for Huntresses exhibiting
these traits. It is my belief that
they are broken and exclusively favored by top NE playres for four reasons working in combination together: mobility & size, range, ease of use,
and cost characteristics vs other Night Elf units & strategies.
Mobility & Size
Huntresses seem to be slightly faster than most units, and this allows them to enjoy tactical advantage in executing focus
fire, as well as other benefits. The real benefit though in the way of "mobility" is not Huntress mobility, but rather,
their large size which entangles other units and prevents them from reacing coherently to the Huntresses. This same
chracteristic allows a player to hide wounded huntreses behind healthy ones, basically preventing focus fire by the enemy,
while at the same time focus firing the enemy. This large size also lends them some degree of area effect resistance against
things such as mortars.
Range
Huntresses enjoy a major range advantage over other "melee" units. This allows them several tactical advantages.
First, they can focus fire on single units FAR more easily than comparable units, and in the hands of a master, can rapidly
incircle, trap and kill other units. Secondly, when coupled with their
speed, they can skirmish, or hit and run, a superior melee unit force, preventing them from doing things such as
destroying bases and expansions. And finally, in a choke, such as in a base, Huntresses have a substantial advantage over a
similar melee force, as it is quite likely that all Huntresses will be able to hit the enemy, while only some of the enemy
can reach the Huntresses.
Ease of Use
Huntresses are far more forgiving than other units. Not only are they the most durable of the focus-fire capable units, but
when used by a poor micromanager to focus fire, they will do reasonably well compared to footmen, grunts or ghouls used by
the same sort of player.
Also, the best hero to use with Huntresses is the Priestess of the Moon, who requires essentially no skill to use well,
because all of her hero abilities are automatic, with the exception of scout, which is not a tactical skill anyway. This allows a
master-level player to focus exclusively on focus fire tactics, while a comparable counter force will require a lot more
management to get similar game effect, sine the PotM is already operating at 100% efficiency...
Cost Characteristics
The biggest advantage of the Huntress is that compared to other "melee units", it uses wood as part of its cost, instead
of a heftier gold price.
This allows a player to have a much larger early melee force compared to other players, on top of the intrinsic advantage
of Huntresses. This encourages players to not tech as well, since most Huntress users will fast tech since wood ends
up almost being the limiting resource in the early game for unit production! Instead, most players will actually fast
expand, since 4-5 wisps will support two ancients of war producing Huntresses, but one gold mine will not if you are mixing
in upgrades. However, early tech will run you into 0 wood fast. In other words,
power and build more Huntresses is strongly encouraged by the game. Any added wood you gather is best spent towards
Huntress upgrades, since the benefit is immediate and large.
Additionally, the other low-tech Night Elf unit, the archer, is patently weak as of 1.13, and isn't really worth building,
except possibly against air, since it dies so easily to creeps and enemy focus fire.
Because Huntress upgrades are seperate from Druid of the Talon upgrades, there is a strong disincentive to switch to druid
of the talon later on, which encourages players to just stick with Huntresses all game, and tech merely for upgrades, and
potentially dryads, since dispel magic counters many possible huntress counters. Additionally, dryads have a very solid
attack, and anti-air capability.
I greatly hope that huntress cost is more gold-based in the next patch and/or they are not as mobile. I'm not sure that will
fix things however. A simple damage/hitpoint change is possible, but would break them badly for novice players, who dont
know how to use their nuances...
Comments? Post on the Forum, or email me.