Rebalancing warcraft 2: human edition

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Hello people , previously I have proposed a rebalance of the orcs making them head more towards melee units and brute strength more than anything else I didn't get much feedback on the orc rebalance as such I would like to receive some even if only hypothetically.


So lets get started with humans first just as we asked before what do humans excel at? Well unlike the orcs who are almost always portrayed as these huge muscular warriors with axes human portrayal is somewhat diverse from human mages to the iconic footmen in steel armor , humans are characterized by being more intelligent than orcs and their armies more organized (footmen in wc3 were stated to fight in formations nothing the like of was mentioned for orcs) so with that in mind lets begin.


Humans:
Peasant: +1 attack , at dire times like the second war everyone is expected to defend humanity peasants are no exception.

Footman: +2 armor , I think you have seen this coming I foreshadowed it in the previous post

Archer: an attack speed reduction , while no numbers are given currently what I envision is allowing archers to fire 3 arrows while trolls fire 2 axes something akin to an arrow and a half per axe

Ranger: +1 armor , the only ranged unit to have some sort of armor effectiveness is yet to be determined , +1 movement speed , elves are believed to be more agile than trolls this and the attack speed should make excellent portrayal of this.

Knight: +1 armor

Paladin: +1 armor , double the mana regeneration , the paladins are an interesting unit as they take the role of supporting other units by healing with the only offensive ability being exorcism that only works against undead as such a paladin mana pool may be torn with these 2 costly mana spells this mana regeneration increase would help paladins cast their spells more often than ogre magi

Ballista: +10 attack , while catapults have area of effect damage a balliasta will be more effective against single targets , if possible ballista attack speed would be improved by basically making the "loading" for the shot take shorter time

Flying machine: +2 armor , focusing on survivability rather than effectiveness the gnomish flying machine is better protected than the goblin zepplin that offers a better line of sight

Demo squad: +2 armor and +5 health: this allows demo squads a higher chance of success compared to goblin sappers whom deal 10 more damage

Mage: +2 range , while the necromantic powers of the death knights do more harm the arcane powers of mages have better reach and effective range

Edit note: previously was to be +1 range but mages have 2 range instead of 3 so to give them range advantage over death knights they would get +2 range

Gryphon riders: +1 speed , +1 sight , +1 armor , this allows gryphons to be more maneuverable than dragons

With this the alliance land armies offer a supporting role for melee units having them with their high armor holding the line while the faster attacking archers and mages do the damage overall the humans would have mediocre melee units an excellent ranged unit and an ever stronger spellcasters now lets head to the navy

Tankers again need no changes

Elven destroyer: +1 sight +6 attack per attack upgrade

Transport ship: +2 carry capacity

Human battleship : +1 speed

Gnomish submarine: +5 armor

The alliance navy would  be faster to create than the durable orcish navy this allows humans an advantage over water control.

Upgrades/spells:
Archer attack upgrade: reduced cost from 300 gold and wood to 200 each

Archer attack upgrade 2: reduced gold cost from 900 to 600 , wood from 500 to 300

Heal: 3 mana per 1 HP this would mean for 30 mana it heals 10 health paladins should exit a barracks with around 90 mana allowing an instant 30 health restoration , research time decreased by 10 seconds

Exorcism: research time reduced by 10 seconds

Flame shield: -100 gold cost , will have longer cast range if possible to allow mages to cast it earlier , will last 10 seconds longer

Polymorph: -10 mana cost , to allow earlier casting time

This concludes it for the rebalancing mod it only exists as this post and the orc rebalance post some things might be changed somethings may be reversed if found too strong the human faction or the alliance would be more pushed towards elven archers and spell casters unlike orcs who could rely solely on melee units and should (theoretically) do well this is a bit more in line with the lore of how orcs aren't very organized savages who are born with warrior physique and would need little training to be effective meanwhile humans and their allies would require more coordination and organization to be effective unable to approach things with raw strength and having to do so in a more methodical approach let me hear or (see) your thoughts down in da comments.



Additional stuff:
-farms make 5 food instead of 4
Town halls give 10 food instead of 1
Grunts cost 675 gold
Ogres: cost 875 gold

Training speed stuff:
Alliance melee units would cost less gold but take more time to train
Footmen: +5 seconds training time
Knights: +5 seconds training time

Stuff that may or may not be implemented:
Gold cost changes:
1- peasants/peons: cost 100 gold
2-Footmen: 300 gold
3-Grunts: 375 gold
4-archers/trolls: 250 gold 50 wood
5-Knights: 600 gold 125 wood
6-Ogres: 675 gold 100 wood
7-Ballistas/catapults: 700 gold (still costs same wood cost)
8-flying machine/goblin zepplin: 400 gold , same wood cost
9-goblin sappers/dwarf demo squad: 500 gold , same wood cost
10-death knights/mages: 900 gold
11-gryphons/dragons: 2000 gold


This is a change of cost as to allow a bit more forgiving economy as it stands wc2 economy holds a tight grip around player freedom I may be the only one to see that wc2 gold costs for land units sucks or doesn't make much sense (seriously why would you pay 400 gold for some dude to carry some wood).

[Pandaprewmaster325]

I don't know what blizzard was thinking At the time of making fireball it is awful compared to death coil no I don't think its the damage being bad or the mana cost its purely because death coil is 100% accurate guarantee to damage the enemy , meanwhile fireball requires careful aiming and add on that friendly fire which makes it even more impractical when wanting to support the melee troops with mages LIKE BLIZZARD HOW DID YOU NOT NOTICE HOW AWFUL THIS IS.


I think a good way to make this spell useful is simply making it not harm friendly troops it still has its unique quirk of requiring more aiming at the enemy but that I believe makes it satisfying to use fireballs just no harming friendly forces and Im sure this spell would be useable.

[Mistral]

you could be surprised but coil is also AOE spell
if you cast it on empty place it can whiff and missed but it anyways SPEND mana on missed cast
it can hp drain in 5x5 aoe around cast place.
this is important - dk do NOT heal 50 hp, they heal only exact hp that was on units that got damaged.
50 damage (and dk heal) is just limit
you can shot up to 25+9 coils in one cast, if in 5x5 area there is 25 land units and can also be 9 air like dragons.
if they all have 1 hp, they all die and dk can get those 36 hp.

so about fireball it have 40 dmg, that means direct shot of explosion is from 20 to 40 hp and splash damage is always 1/4 so 10, then splash damage around is from 5 to 10.
after it flies to cast target location, its speed becomes exactly 1/2 from what it was, and it starting speed depends on distance between mage and target location.
after that it makes explosions every 8 game ticks and disappears on 40th tick, which is exactly 5 explosions.
(dragon or gryphon disappear after 25 ticks which is 3 expo)
each explosion makes damage on direct hit (20-40) and splash on 8 units around direct hit (5-10)
so this is very very VERY random yes.

potentially firebal is way stronger than coil, if you acurately hit line of units you can potentially do 200-300 damage to group of units, where some weak units like archers or peons is 70-80% guaranteed to die.
while coil only have 50 hardcoded damage and there is no way to go beyond that (ofc this also heals dk but...)

so there is no problem in spell itself actually but how to use it, you cannot find enemy units convenientely standing in good line like this often, more often it can be when they are moving around but its requires high skill in aiming it.
other thing is that blizzard is way more stronger so usage of fireball becames obsolete.

[Pandaprewmaster325]

you could be surprised but coil is also AOE spell
if you cast it on empty place it can whiff and missed but it anyways SPEND mana on missed cast
it can hp drain in 5x5 aoe around cast place.
this is important - dk do NOT heal 50 hp, they heal only exact hp that was on units that got damaged.
50 damage (and dk heal) is just limit
you can shot up to 25+9 coils in one cast, if in 5x5 area there is 25 land units and can also be 9 air like dragons.
if they all have 1 hp, they all die and dk can get those 36 hp.

so about fireball it have 40 dmg, that means direct shot of explosion is from 20 to 40 hp and splash damage is always 1/4 so 10, then splash damage around is from 5 to 10.
after it flies to cast target location, its speed becomes exactly 1/2 from what it was, and it starting speed depends on distance between mage and target location.
after that it makes explosions every 8 game ticks and disappears on 40th tick, which is exactly 5 explosions.
(dragon or gryphon disappear after 25 ticks which is 3 expo)
each explosion makes damage on direct hit (20-40) and splash on 8 units around direct hit (5-10)
so this is very very VERY random yes.

potentially firebal is way stronger than coil, if you acurately hit line of units you can potentially do 200-300 damage to group of units, where some weak units like archers or peons is 70-80% guaranteed to die.
while coil only have 50 hardcoded damage and there is no way to go beyond that (ofc this also heals dk but...)

so there is no problem in spell itself actually but how to use it, you cannot find enemy units convenientely standing in good line like this often, more often it can be when they are moving around but its requires high skill in aiming it.
other thing is that blizzard is way more stronger so usage of fireball becames obsolete.

Yeah I knew about coil aoe damage spread its ok now I suspected that the healing for DK is based on how much damage it deals but I wasn't 100% sure if that's the case thx for confirming that.

And while fireball has much better damage overall it requires more skill which in practice makes coil better  as you simply direct the coil at the enemy and thats it it doesn't even have to be on them just near them meanwhile fireball isn't always optimal to use as you stated and blizzard well you won't be using blizzard against moving targets unless you lure them into the blizzard  the problem is coil doesn't punish you for using it in battle near your troops fireball does that and while 50 dmg isn't much its guaranteed damage with no consequences for your troops I don't think anyone would trade safe damage dealing  +heal to friendly fire dealing thing that requires some skill when u can just spend that mana on an easier spell to use that is blizzard.

[Pandaprewmaster325]

So I heard that the carry capacity for trans ships is hardcoded which causes big problem to the change for ze human trans ships  something akin to an identity crisis heh , now if thats impossible to change well that would mean a new change for the trans ships I dunno what to come up with now but I would make sure to post it once I get a good idea of what I want to do with the trans ships  anyone interested in this mod stay tuned AND stay hard.

[Pandaprewmaster325]

A unique interaction for humans is demo squads die instantly when invisibility is casted on them while its unique interaction but its honestly more of a minus for humans than plus honestly humans simply lack any sort of buff for their units orcs get attack damage increase , invulnerable buff , movement speed buff  while humans only get healing which is garbage and invisibility that takes up 200 mana without enhancing a unit stats basically humans get no buffs for their stats using magic I don't know why blizzard thought its a goos idea but my theory is they gave humans health restoration and gave orcs anything but health restoration but problem is the health restoration spell is so bad and ineffective.

Goblin sappers can get hasted and orcs can do some shenanigans with that sadly since invisibility kills demo squad humans don't get to do cool stuff with them if THIS isn't some hardcoded BS and is changeable then Im considering adding that into the list of changes for humans , its implications sound really good for humans giving them another tool to harass economy other than blizzard or even knock out forts LOL I could imagine strats being built around invisible demo squads something like human fast castle onto 2 gnomish inventors and a mage tower.

[Mistral]

fun fact, goblins and dwarfs have a little different movement animations
because of that haste spell working better on dwarfs
you can test, without buff they move same speed
but with haste dwarfs are faster that goblins
if you want real numbers then
haste makes goblins move 2 frames faster
but dwarfs will move 4 frames faster

[Pandaprewmaster325]

fun fact, goblins and dwarfs have a little different movement animations
because of that haste spell working better on dwarfs
you can test, without buff they move same speed
but with haste dwarfs are faster that goblins
if you want real numbers then
haste makes goblins move 2 frames faster
but dwarfs will move 4 frames faster

Well that's new news this doesn't matter in 1v1 tho which matters more than team games in my opinion

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Ok so after playing this game for a while I got to see a lvl3 grunt clapping a lvl7 paladin why? BLOODLUST , seriously BLIZZARD? HOW THE HECK DO YOU NOT NOTICE HOW BROKEN BLOODLUST IS? If a grunt a tier 1 unit with lvl3 can beat the crap out of a unit that needs a unique building then needs another unique building to unlock it then you pay 2000 gold for upgrading paladins and heal and your paladins still gets clapped pretty hard THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS MAN WHAT'S EVEN MORE FRUSTRATING IS BLIZZARD DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO PATCH THE GAME LIKE 10, ANNIVERSARY OR SOMETHING , you aren't getting rewarded adequately for playing humans while orcs with the least effort can still clap you , listen im an orc fanboy but this is beyond ridiculous I know people came by and said that and that about BLOODLUST but no effort was made to nerf this spell no matter what you do if you don't buff humans they will still suck its by design , "but demo teams-" shut up demo teams require accurate timing to kill the most out of ogre magi  u don't want to use them on the flanks of an ogre magi group where fewer magi go no the center is the right place but how possible that is? I can't wait to get my hands on a filthy pc copy of this game to fix the goddamn trash balance blizzard left but you know what im taking an RTS warcraft title over any RPG warcraft title anytime in the year damn blizzard get back to the roots of warcraft RTS games...

[Mistral]

lol wtf
no one will use blood on grunt
why, if you have ogres
if you must have to use grunt vs paladin then something is very fucked up going on in your game (like maybe no lumber for ogres ?)

so the main problem with blood is that blizzard fucked up calculation, it should have been making exactly x2 damage
but they remove armor after doubling, not before.
this makes the armor itself and armor upgrades is way more weakier agains blood.
because of that it can become from x1.5 to x3 damage.
only on units with 0 armor like peons it have normal honest x2 as intended

main power of blood is not actually because killing units, there is many other stuff that can kill enemy units.
but there is very very little things that can kill buildings.
i mean kill buildings FAST.
lvl 1 ogre have 8 str damage and 4 pierce
he deals from 6 to 12 dmg on 0 armor unit
and 12 - 24 with blood
but on building str damage is blocked
building have 20 armor
so no matter blood or not, 8 or 16 they blocked by 20
that means there is stay only 2-4 damage or 4-8 with blood
but lvl 3 ogre with 2 upgrades on damage
will have 12 str damage
and with blood it will be 24, that means it outdamage even buildings armor
20 - 24 = 4 more overdamage
means 6-12 damage on buildings with blood, instead of default 4-8 (which is basically x3 instead of x2)
difference prob seems not very big, but ogres attack speed is fast
with blood they need 7-8 less hits in average to kill guard tower for example
this is why its very VERY important to do 2 damage upgrades for ogres
they can crack open closed bases sometimes even before player can understand what happens and before peons can run here to even start repair
ogres and peons have same attack animation speed, that means you need 2 peons to outrepair blood ogres lvl 1 damages, but for lvl 3 ogres you need 3 peons per ogre, sometimes you simply not have enough space for peons to stand and repair, so ogres will crack open base no matter if you repair or not.

but ok this is buildings, if you remember units then lets check vs knight (or other ogre)
so they on lvl 1, have 4 armor, they block it from 8
8-4=4 + 4(pierce) =  4-8 damage
and witch blood
16-4=12 + 8 =  10-20 damage, so directly x2.5 already
now check lvl5 vs lvl5
12 dmg - 8 armor = 4 + 4 = 4-8 damage normal
but with blood
24 - 8 = 16 + 8 = 12 - 24 damage
which is x3, they will need 10 less hits in average to kill knight
this is why important to upgrade damage for ogres

remember knight still hits ogre for 4-8, he need 10 more attacks in average to kill
if you add heal here, you can add +1 attack because heal animation is just like attack animation.
so you can heal 40 hp from full mana (seems like 42 but blizzard set hardcoded limit of 40 per 1 heal cast)
so now what, if you lucky and ogre roll small damage, like 12 he still need only 4 hits, and if he roll high like 24, actually even 20 enough, it takes just 2
so what that means, ogre need 5 attack in average to kill knight, knight need like 16
knights spend +1 attack for heal, but its not +1 BUT +2 because while they heal ogres still hits them, and at this time they could have been spending time atacking ogre, so that means knight use +2 to add in average +3 for ogres
now knight have like 18, while ogre still have like 8
so, what if we have more knights, and they all heal
20-11, 22-14, 24-17, 26-20, 28-23, 30-26, 32-29, 34-31, 36-34, 38-37, 40-40, 42-43
so that shows that you need at least 14 (in average, really you need more) knights to outheal one ogre in fight vs same amount of ogres
also remember they all heal from full mana, while blood costs only 50
and on the duration of blood ogre can make 40 attacks.
oh yea you see how wonderful its number 40 again, in my previous calculation paladins was able outheal ogres exactly after 40 hits.
this is reason why blizzard maked heal exactly 6 mana, this is real balance you see.
the only thing is that its on average and in ideal fight and when all paladins heal perfectly on timings

[Pandaprewmaster325]

lol wtf
no one will use blood on grunt
why, if you have ogres
if you must have to use grunt vs paladin then something is very fucked up going on in your game (like maybe no lumber for ogres ?)

so the main problem with blood is that blizzard fucked up calculation, it should have been making exactly x2 damage
but they remove armor after doubling, not before.
this makes the armor itself and armor upgrades is way more weakier agains blood.
because of that it can become from x1.5 to x3 damage.
only on units with 0 armor like peons it have normal honest x2 as intended

main power of blood is not actually because killing units, there is many other stuff that can kill enemy units.
but there is very very little things that can kill buildings.
i mean kill buildings FAST.
lvl 1 ogre have 8 str damage and 4 pierce
he deals from 6 to 12 dmg on 0 armor unit
and 12 - 24 with blood
but on building str damage is blocked
building have 20 armor
so no matter blood or not, 8 or 16 they blocked by 20
that means there is stay only 2-4 damage or 4-8 with blood
but lvl 3 ogre with 2 upgrades on damage
will have 12 str damage
and with blood it will be 24, that means it outdamage even buildings armor
20 - 24 = 4 more overdamage
means 6-12 damage on buildings with blood, instead of default 4-8 (which is basically x3 instead of x2)
difference prob seems not very big, but ogres attack speed is fast
with blood they need 7-8 less hits in average to kill guard tower for example
this is why its very VERY important to do 2 damage upgrades for ogres
they can crack open closed bases sometimes even before player can understand what happens and before peons can run here to even start repair
ogres and peons have same attack animation speed, that means you need 2 peons to outrepair blood ogres lvl 1 damages, but for lvl 3 ogres you need 3 peons per ogre, sometimes you simply not have enough space for peons to stand and repair, so ogres will crack open base no matter if you repair or not.

but ok this is buildings, if you remember units then lets check vs knight (or other ogre)
so they on lvl 1, have 4 armor, they block it from 8
8-4=4 + 4(pierce) =  4-8 damage
and witch blood
16-4=12 + 8 =  10-20 damage, so directly x2.5 already
now check lvl5 vs lvl5
12 dmg - 8 armor = 4 + 4 = 4-8 damage normal
but with blood
24 - 8 = 16 + 8 = 12 - 24 damage
which is x3, they will need 10 less hits in average to kill knight
this is why important to upgrade damage for ogres

remember knight still hits ogre for 4-8, he need 10 more attacks in average to kill
if you add heal here, you can add +1 attack because heal animation is just like attack animation.
so you can heal 40 hp from full mana (seems like 42 but blizzard set hardcoded limit of 40 per 1 heal cast)
so now what, if you lucky and ogre roll small damage, like 12 he still need only 4 hits, and if he roll high like 24, actually even 20 enough, it takes just 2
so what that means, ogre need 5 attack in average to kill knight, knight need like 16
knights spend +1 attack for heal, but its not +1 BUT +2 because while they heal ogres still hits them, and at this time they could have been spending time atacking ogre, so that means knight use +2 to add in average +3 for ogres
now knight have like 18, while ogre still have like 8
so, what if we have more knights, and they all heal
20-11, 22-14, 24-17, 26-20, 28-23, 30-26, 32-29, 34-31, 36-34, 38-37, 40-40, 42-43
so that shows that you need at least 14 (in average, really you need more) knights to outheal one ogre in fight vs same amount of ogres
also remember they all heal from full mana, while blood costs only 50
and on the duration of blood ogre can make 40 attacks.
oh yea you see how wonderful its number 40 again, in my previous calculation paladins was able outheal ogres exactly after 40 hits.
this is reason why blizzard maked heal exactly 6 mana, this is real balance you see.
the only thing is that its on average and in ideal fight and when all paladins heal perfectly on timings

I just happened to encounter bloodlust grunt so I sent a paladin to see if he can take him lol he didn't which was surprising and annoying at the same time.

Now since bloodlust messed up with armor calculation shouldn't there be a way to fix this? No not using map editor but from the data itself.

It was 3 am when I wrote the post above was kinda sleepy lol.

The thing with ogres attacking faster is somewhat silly as in warcraft 3 high tier melee units have longer attack delay compared to warcraft 2 BUT since wc2 favors melee units over ranged (opposite of wc3) perhaps its fine? I get that they made heal 6 mana for reasons but in an actual game I doubt you would have full mana paladin add on this the fast reaction it needs isn't as easy to pull off since you can heal enemy units with mis clicks but as I said before humans aren't adequately rewarded for micro compared to orcs who can simply bloodlust and call it a day.

[Mistral]

did you saw triggers game mode?
there is also triggers editor prog
there is trigger that fix blood, makes exactly x2, just changes place of armor calc
you can set trigger in map and host in in triggers game mode

[Pandaprewmaster325]

did you saw triggers game mode?
there is also triggers editor prog
there is trigger that fix blood, makes exactly x2, just changes place of armor calc
you can set trigger in map and host in in triggers game mode

No sadly Im not playing on pc  these months using only my phone having installed a ps1 emulator and gone through couple ps1 games wc2 came to mind having never tried it before but played its various remakes in wc3 I was like hey this is my chance to try out OG wc2 so I got the dark saga port there is no way to edit the game data as its ps1 data  what I'm trying to say is there is no way for me to use map editor trigger editor whatever items the pc version has  which is why I again and again stated in the posts that there is no current version of the mod being made until then I can only speculate and theorize about what to change but  that's a glimmer of hope knowing BL against armor can be fixed.

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Im quite surprised that the human rebalance got almost 6000 views surpassing the orc rebalance post I hope the views are people actually viewing the post itself I think views are registered as those who click on a post.

I see that the human rebalance is more important than orc we all know why im not typing it  and that makes me happy knowing people are more interested in human rebalancing more than orc rebalancing saying that as an orc and horde fanboy myself...

[Pandaprewmaster325]

You know if its possible I could also expand the mod reach to not only balance but also campaign honestly the  tides of darkness campaigns could use some more fleshing out like make the town of hillsbrad look like an actual town same goes for stromgarde , stratholme , and the capital city

I did something similar to warcraft 3 after  7 months of continuous modding  of that game (I have made a mod for warcraft 3 it needs some final touches and its ready to be on hive workshop) some ideas im thinking of is making some missions harder like orc mission 2 with a lot more human soldiers around , hillsbrad with some walls roads and some arranged building placement

For stromgarde  if its possible to create custom units I could make some "elite guards" for stromgrade to make it a bit harder to take the city im thinking of yellow footmen since its possible to make units colored certain colors but not necessarily belong to a faction of that color (like gorefiend)

With larger attack waves  maybe double the size of the usual attack waves , and a huge garrison of defenders for places like hillsbrad , tol barad , dun algaz , etc