Warcraft 3 Beta Update #12 -- Patch 1.32: When Its Good to be Dead (05-19-02)

 After two patches of siege dominance by the Night Elves and especially Orcs, Patch 1.32 has arrived. It contained a fair number of changes, all of which were beneficial. Among other things, I think most items, save a few +9 claws of attack on Gnoll Woods, and orb of frost in general, are more or less balanced on the existing ladder maps. I also think that 1-2 more patches will ready the game for release in terms of multiplayer.

There are three things that really stand out about this patch -- Undead are arguably the most powerful now (up from the worst, bar none), Orcs are no longer overpowered, with the sole exception of a possible wyvern issue, and Humans are all but hopeless. There are several contributing factors for this, but to get at those, its best to first describe the process that resulted in the current state of the game.

Coming out of 1.31 Blizzard knew that siege had to be fixed -- big time. Also, air units in general needed some tweaking, and chain lightning needed a major nerf. And of course, Burrows made playing Orc risk-free, which was a brutal flashback to the old Zerg 1.02/1.03 days. Blizzard fixed these across the board, affecting humans, orcs, and night elves. This in turn left Undead potentially the strongest, and Humans, which were slightly less strong than Night Elves, as the worst race of all.

So Why Are Humans So Bad?

The key reason Humans are so bad is that they lack any one powerful choice. Knights are probabaly their strongest choice, but consider their other options. None of them are exceptionally strong, and none of their heroes are exceptionally threatening. It could be said that humans are the most balanced race of all, because all of their choices have distinct flavors, and aren't terribly overpowering. I think the key difference between Humans and other races is that they don't have access to powerful technology "for free". Orcs and Night Elves have easy access to siege (virtually free, since you generally want a War Forge or a Huntress Hall), while Orcs, Night Elves and Undead all have very strong early heroes (Farseer, Demon Hunter, Keeper of the Grove, Dread Lord).

Humans don't have easy access to siege or any advanced units without an inconvenient enabling structure like a workshop or an arcane sanctum, both of which cost both time and money. Knights are the sole exception, and indeed, are proving to be a backbone of the few Human player's strategies, but they are too little too late. Humans also dont have an exceptionally powerful hero -- Paladin isnt very good for offense, Blizzard is still hard to use, and Stormbolt is arguably inferior as a hero killer compared to various area effects like Carrion Swarm (Which does generally as much damage as bolt to a single target AND is an area AND only costs only 25 more mana... stun doesnt make a big difference). I think that the MK's thunderclap ability is part of the puzzle that people arent using, but even then, Human's are underpowered on the unit front. I believe that Blizzard must proceed with extreme caution though, since once people start using thunderclap, it wont take a very large change to Human technology availability to create a significant problem.

How About Those Orcs?

As far as I can tell, Orcs are reasonably balanced relative to other races now, the sole exception being humans. Their more powerful strategies revolve around farseer variants, such as farseer-wyvern, farseer-blademaster, and any of the above with catapults and maybe grunts. Unlike last patch when these strategies were impossible to beat, they are pretty fair now. I think that Wyverns are a bit hard to defeat with anti-air relative to other air units, but anti-air in general is weaker than it maybe should be. Catapult rushing no longer seems to be viable.

I believe that my old shockwave/chain lightning strategy geared more towards headhunters and catapults than grunts will be quite effective this patch, especially if applied as a map control strategy. Very few Orc players are using it though.

The Undead Menace

I believe that The Undead are slightly more powerful than all other races in this patch. In particular, the Dreadlord's Carrion Swarm coupled with ghouls and excessive use of cannabalize is quite potent. I've found that harassing an opponent with this strategy is very difficult to counter properly. This is augmented by both Lich or Death Knight, both for anti-hero purposes (death coil or frost nova). I personally prefer DK, though some prefer lich. I think they are reasonably equivelent choices in terms of overall strength. Frost Wyrms are still reasonably good, and are a good finisher. I'll go into greater detail on this one tommorow.

Suggestions / Additional Comments

  • Human tech access should be a little easier. Alternatively, priests should be available at barracks as a teir 2 unit, with the upgrades at arcane sanctum, and a cost decrease to arcane sanctum. Either of these will give Humans a bit of midgame "Umph".
  • Carrion swarm needs to do less damage vs single targets (slightly less, perhaps -25).
  • Cannabalize shouldn't be such a "freebie". It more than makes up its cost within a minute, and its super fast to research.
  • Anti-air may need to hit air a bit stronger in general. (+5-7%?)
  • Blademaster, Demon Hunter and Dread Lord still are a mite hard to kill.
  • Spellcasters in general are once again underpowered. I think this may be due to strong early games and early units, as well as powerful areas that decimate spellcasters quickly. They are also expensive to access relative to other "immediate payoff" technologies (Siege). I'm not entirely sure if its one factor...
  • Some people have complained about the Keeper of the Grove's FON ability. Its definately abuse with moonwells vs certain races, but isn't as bad as complained about.
  • Quackers made a compelling argument for TC war stomp being imbalanced, since its cooldown time is only slightly longer than its stun time. Makes sense to me! I will investigate further...

    Comments? Post on the Forum, or email me.