The Two Fundamental Strategies of Warcraft 3

Difficulty: N/A
Type: Theory

While spending time thinking about Warcraft 3 strategy, I started to realize that all successful strategies are fundamentally based on one of two things -- Anti-Hero, or Anti-Unit. This is certainly evident when one examines the most powerful strategies of Beta 1.03 -- Farseer/Tauren Lord, Crypt Fiend/Any Hero, FoN Rush, Water Elemental Rush, and Mountain King first-hero builds. I'll go through each of these and explain how it fits into one of these two paradigms.

The reason that I think strategies break down into this category is that in WC3, players depend on having heroes to augment unit offensive potential, or defensive potential, and then units to make up for the weaknesses of the hero. Without heroes, units are at a big disadvantage. Without units, heroes are much easier to isolate and kill. Hence, if you can eliminate either your opponents heroes, or their units before they can do the same to you, you will have a substantial advantage even if they are inflicting similar OVERALL damage to you. In a nutshell, heroes and units are greater than the sum of their parts. I think this also explains why 2-hero builds are often better than 1-hero builds in 1v1 play -- not only does it allow you to have more diverse skills (and more skill points overall), but it makes it more likely you will have at least one hero up and kicking at any given time in a battle.

Anti-Hero Builds
Crypt Fiend / Any Hero (particularly lich with frost nova) is a pretty basic anti-hero build. Although crypt fiends CAN be countered either by heavy melee, or by siege mixed with infantry, their long range and firing characterstics allow them to attack and slay heroes with relative ease. This is particularly powerful when you frost nova an enemy hero, killing them off. Crypt fiends basically deter the use of heroes for area effect spells, and also deter the use of defensive abilities such as holy bolt by always getting in shots on heroes that enter a battle.

Mountain King first usually results in the player having a strong anti-hero capability in the form of stormbolt. Although stormbolt is not as mana-efficient as thunderclap for purposes of defeating enemy units, it is extremely effective against enemy heroes. A good example of his is when a Mountain King and Footmen are placed against a Tauren Chieftan and a mixture of Taurens and Grunts. Although the Human force on paper is much weaker, the Mountain King can usually destroy the Tauren Chieftan quickly, and then turn the battle through his firepower and an occasional additional stormbolt at injured enemy units... while the Chieftan will get off very few shockwaves, either by dying early, or by being forced to retreat for fear of an additional stormbolt.

Anti-Unit Builds
Water Elemental Rush and FoN rush are both anti-unit builds. They are very poor at killing heroes (though Water Ele is better than FoN), and instead basically guarantee that you overwhelm an opponents troops, leaving their unsupported hero to fight your summoned creatures. By stripping their heroes of all their support, even when your summoned creatures disappear you are left with a few basic units and your hero, against their hero with no troops...

Shockwave/Chain is also an excellent example of an anti-unit build. Though this is not terribly useful at hero killing, except against low level mage heroes with no heal potions, it can quickly decimate an entire enemy force. For instance, level 2 shock with level 2 chain will almost certainly kill a half dozen ghouls or footmen in a heartbeat, and will undoubtedly destroy a number of headhunters and archers with no problem. These spells, when used early and often in battle, quickly strip an opponent of their heroes support. When matched against a Mountain King build, the battle becomes "can the orc destroy the MK's support units before the MK kills the Farseer?". An MK with no army, does not protect a base... And a half dozen grunts with no heroes are easy to pick off with a single MK, after a run to the potion shop.

While some would argue that there are strategies that are outside this mold, I challenge those folks to present one that is effective, and has a different basic premise, as opposed to having a few unique elements. For instance "powering" really isnt a valid underlying strategy in Warcraft 3, but powering WITH an anti-hero or anti-unit build is a great implementation of a fundamental approach on anti-hero. Similarly, a tech rush up to immobilizers like wolf raiders could be quantified as "tech", but really is an anti-hero build. All successful strategies have either a strong anti-hero component, or a strong anti-unit component. Ive seen none that have a lot of both.

I speculate that a support-hero build may become possible later on (i.e. heavy on casters + multi-hero), but at 1.03 this is not possible. This would introduce a third fundamental vein I believe, since this build is neither anti-hero or anti-unit, but rather, higher effectiveness in general with no specific focus.

Please post on the forum to discussion this article.