GitP WarCraft 3: The Frozen Throne group (thread II)

[Vulkan]

As I have no commitments, I'll probably be there. Alone, but there.

Don't worry I`ll be there.. Sad story behind as to why.

[742]

so im here and only one other person popped by. this is annoying.

[Vulkan]

I was on earlier and no one showed and then I got real sad and left.

[Melamoto]

Well, the session had the misfortune to coincide with Easter, which took a bit of a priority to some people . Next week, things should go as normal.

[Winterwind]

so im here and only one other person popped by. this is annoying.

I was on earlier and no one showed and then I got real sad and left.

I guess Mel is right and most people have been off to Easter, with the few who did log on missing each other. Next week should go better.

Also, remember that an empty channel does not mean no Playgrounders are online - they just may be in games. If the bot is online, try using the .fl command, otherwise try looking for some people via /whois or /f l.


Also, I'm back!

[Battleship789]

Happy Easter, all of you!


If you have time in spite of the festivities, reminder: Melee session today. I can't be there; I still do not return back home until Wednesday.

Last year's Easter session was great (enters into a nostalgic stupor)...doesn't sound like that happened this year though. I wasn't able to make it; I had Easter stuff going on this year.

[Vulkan]

On a side note my gaming club is done with it's hiatus and one of the games we do is Warcraft 3.

I figured that maybe I could combine GitP Warcraft 3 group with it for maximum efficiency.. We also do, starcraft 2, TF2, Starcraft 1 and were expanding from that.

Spoiler

Show

http://technologicalgentlemen.tk/

[Winterwind]

So, reminder (hah, good feeling to be fulfilling one's "duties" once again ): Tomorrow is our next custom map session. I hope to see you all there.

[Faulty]

Hey! I'm new to WC3. My Battle.net name is FaultyClockwork. I'm pretty crappy at the game. I'm only on the 7th chapter of the human campaign and lost to a Normal bot the other day but I'm slowly but steadily improving, so I hope to join you guys at some point.

[Winterwind]

Great! Welcome, and may you have a nice stay in our little group! Don't worry, we'll gladly help you on your way to WarCraft-mastery!


Incidentally, reminder to all: Tomorrow is our next melee session, and I look very much forward to seeing you all there.

[Faulty]

Don't worry, we'll gladly help you on your way to WarCraft-mastery!

That might be a while.

[Inhuman Bot]

That might be a while.

I've become reasonably good, so you probably can too.

[The Orange Zergling]

That might be a while.

Even though in the beginning it sounds and feels like there are a million things to keep track of at once and that you may never get it, all it really takes is practice, as cliche as that sounds. If you lose, try to figure out why you lost and correct it (if you can) next game, whether it was building the wrong unit or not expanding early enough or lack of micromanagement or something else entirely. You'll get it soon enough.

[Vulkan]

Oh thank god some one I can make a billion Psyconaught references with.

[Faulty]

Even though in the beginning it sounds and feels like there are a million things to keep track of at once and that you may never get it, all it really takes is practice, as cliche as that sounds. If you lose, try to figure out why you lost and correct it (if you can) next game, whether it was building the wrong unit or not expanding early enough or lack of micromanagement or something else entirely. You'll get it soon enough.

Thank you. I've been told by a few people that WC3 is pretty good for APM so I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. I tried Red Alert 3 and both Dawn of War games before this and did not do as well. I'm hoping to gain RTS competence by the time Starcarft 2 comes out.

My current strategy (with humans at least) for unit management is I put all my important buildings into control group one, so I can easily build units, call to arms, upgrade stuff, etc without being at my base. I place the rally point for all the buildings other than town halls on my hero (I generally use a paladin, because you have Arthas in the campaign). Then I group my units together into other control groups. My paladin, footmen and knights going in control group 2, rifleman go in control group 3, and mages and priests go in group 4. I haven't done much meaningful with other units, I'm still figuring out the flying units and their uses.

[Inhuman Bot]

Thank you. I've been told by a few people that WC3 is pretty good for APM so I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. I tried Red Alert 3 and both Dawn of War games before this and did not do as well. I'm hoping to gain RTS competence by the time Starcarft 2 comes out.

My current strategy (with humans at least) for unit management is I put all my important buildings into control group one, so I can easily build units, call to arms, upgrade stuff, etc without being at my base. I place the rally point for all the buildings other than town halls on my hero (I generally use a paladin, because you have Arthas in the campaign). Then I group my units together into other control groups. My paladin, footmen and knights going in control group 2, rifleman go in control group 3, and mages and priests go in group 4. I haven't done much meaningful with other units, I'm still figuring out the flying units and their uses.

Well, if you're about Battle.net anytime, whisper me. (Slaanash, or Ascension@useast for my SC profile.) I'll play against you and try to give you some tips, if you'd like.

[Winterwind]

My current strategy (with humans at least) for unit management is I put all my important buildings into control group one, so I can easily build units, call to arms, upgrade stuff, etc without being at my base. I place the rally point for all the buildings other than town halls on my hero (I generally use a paladin, because you have Arthas in the campaign). Then I group my units together into other control groups. My paladin, footmen and knights going in control group 2, rifleman go in control group 3, and mages and priests go in group 4.

I use 1 through 4 for various units (1 for heroes and melee units, 2 for heroes and ranged units, 3 for casters, 4 for air usually) and then put my different buildings on the other numbers (5 for the first unit production building type (like all my Barracks), 6 for the second unit production building type (like all my Arcane Sanctuaries), 7 for the third unit production building type (like all my Gryphon Aviaries), 8 for my Altar, 9 for my upgrade building(s) (like my Forge), and 0 for my main building). That allows you to do whatever you want to do at the building in question without having to tab to the building you want first - that's much quicker and allows me to do it even in the heat of combat.

Also, I'd recommend you use an Arch Mage with Water Elemental as primary and Brilliance Aura as secondary skill as your hero; that's usually more useful than a Paladin. At least until you master the art of using multiple heroes (little tip: F1 is a permanent hotkey to your first hero, F2 to your second hero, etc. Very useful to give orders to your heroes only while keeping them in the regular number-groups otherwise).

I haven't done much meaningful with other units, I'm still figuring out the flying units and their uses.

There is this very useful table somewhere on the BattleNet website - I'd link it, only I keep getting some weird error whenever I try (perhaps it's down currently or something, I suspect some odd connection issues on my end instead though) that tells you how much damage which attack type deals to which armour type. That's pretty much the heart of the game - it tells you which unit is good at countering which unit.

From memory, it's more or less (the numbers meaning the percentage which the respective damage type deals to the armour type in question):
{table]|Heavy|Medium|Light|Unarmoured|Hero|Fortified
Normal|100|150|100|100|100|70
Pierce|100|70|200|150|50|30
Magic|200|70|125|125|50|30
Hero|100|100|100|100|100|70
Siege|100|70|100|150|50|200
Chaos|100|100|100|100|100|100
Spells|100|100|100|100|70|100^*[/table]
^* While I think the Spell damage type itself deals full damage to Fortified armour per default, many spells have an individual and often very high in-built damage reduction against it.

Note that it's somewhat different in Reign of Chaos though.

Very, very roughly summarized, what this means is that melee counters ranged units, ranged units counter casters and air, air counters melee.

You don't have to memorize it, but having a rough idea of what damage type is good against what is fairly important.

[Faulty]

Well, if you're about Battle.net anytime, whisper me. (Slaanash, or Ascension@useast for my SC profile.) I'll play against you and try to give you some tips, if you'd like.

You planning on being on this evening?

*stuff*

Thanks for the tips! Are siege weapons good for much other than buildings?

[AgentPaper]

Thanks for the tips! Are siege weapons good for much other than buildings?

I've heard good things about siege engines. Specifically that they beat everything.

[Inhuman Bot]

You planning on being on this evening?

Yeah, I'm usually on WC or SC on saturday, though sometimes AFK. I tend to check back every 5-10 minutes, though.

As for siege, depends. Raiders love chewing up dryads, if they can get to them, or priests.

Hanging around Bnet now, whisper me for a game.

[Winterwind]

Thanks for the tips! Are siege weapons good for much other than buildings?

Yeah, unarmoured stuff. Which is mostly casters; the Night Elves are unique in that they have some actual combat units that also have Unarmoured type (Huntresses, Dryads). To all of these siege weapons provide an excellent counter.

Also, note that there are some buildings (Human towers and Orc towers and burrows pre-upgrade) that do not have Fortified armour (having Heavy instead). Siege weapons fare okay against those still (due to their long range), but usually it's easier to destroy those with ranged pierce units or magic damage.

[Faulty]

Just wanted to mention, I'm interested in melee, not custom. I'm on both lists atm.

[Winterwind]

Just wanted to mention, I'm interested in melee, not custom. I'm on both lists atm.

Oh, sorry. My bad. Fixed now.

[Faulty]

Oh, sorry. My bad. Fixed now.

No problem.

EDIT: Yay! I finally beat a bot without giving it a health handicap. It's only easy mode, but still, I couldn't do it before. Here's a replay if anyone wants to comment on my performance. I know it's not great (I only got one hero, never did much with T3, etc) but it's an improvement.

[Winterwind]

I'll make sure to watch that replay tomorrow, will comment on it then.

Pity you missed the melee session though.

[Faulty]

I'll make sure to watch that replay tomorrow, will comment on it then.

Pity you missed the melee session though.

I had to sit through a choir recital.

[Rigel Cyrosea]

I kinda feel like WC3 for a change, now that CSL is done. Too bad I missed the melee session.
Well, I'm gonna sit in the channel for a while, if anyone feels like coming on.

[Winterwind]

Alright, so I watched that replay of yours now, Faulty; here is the advice I can give based on the notes I made while watching it:

Spoiler

Show

• Start by ordering a new wisp, then sending the wisps you want to gather gold with into the mine, then order buildings. You end up with more gold early on that way, and hence overall quicker.
• Start with an altar. Matter of fact, here is the proper build order for what you wanted to do.
  
  Spoiler

  Show

  - order 6th wisp, send 4 wisps into mine, order altar with 5th wisp
  - order 7th wisp, order moonwell with 6th wisp (or, if you want the absolutely optimal solution, pull out a wisp from the mine to build the altar with when the 6th wisp is half-way done, and send the 6th wisp into the mine)
  - send all wisps you build from now on onto lumber. Keep building wisps.
  - when the altar and moonwell finish, order a hero, then send one of these to fill up the mine completely, and the other onto lumber as well.
  - keep gathering lumber until you have 160 thereof.
  - build an Ancient of War and a Huntress Hall simultaneously
  - build a second Ancient of War as soon as you can afford it.
  - build a second moonwell as soon as you can afford it.
  - stop building wisps when you have 17 used up supply after both Ancients have been ordered (i.e., hero and 12 wisps).
  This way, you end up with an early hero, can build huntresses quickly early on, and have precisely the right free food to order a huntress as soon as your first Ancient of War and the Hall finish.
• Use rally points for your wisps - they won't hang around doing nothing for that long then. You can set a rally point onto the mine or the forest to order the wisps to start gathering the instant they spawn.
• Don't queue up that much. Preferably, never have more than one thing after the one currently being built in the queue - you bind the resources that way and hence cannot use them to build stuff. To demonstrate: If you queue up four wisps, that's 240 gold that is bound. If you queued up only two, you would have 120 more gold, and could use that to order, say, your Ancient of War more early - and still queue up another wisp before these two were done. You end up far quicker that way.
• Generally, try to get things done more quickly - you have somewhat long moments when your workers stand around doing nothing. Though admittedly this is mostly a thing of practice, and nothing more.
• Leave no spaces between moonwells. Actually, there is some more to be said about building placement, so I'll go into a little more detail here.
  
  Spoiler

  Show

  You want to build your base narrowly, so that few units can block the passages leading deeper into the base - that way, the enemy cannot follow you in efficiently if you need to retreat, or risks being trapped in your base if he should get in anyway. Also, this means it will be more difficult - ideally, impossible - to not get into the range of your trees when attacking you. This makes your base a very safe haven for you - and you need that, for there will always be times when you are not in the shape to fight.
  
  The moonwells should ideally be placed at the side, in the vicinity of your lumber-gathering wisps; if you fight against melee-focused opponents (especially Orcs), you may even want to block the way to some of your wisps entirely. That way, they cannot be attacked as easily, and can be healed quickly if needed.
• Turn off Immolation when not in combat!
  Generally speaking, Mana Burn is often more useful than Immolation anyhow - Immolation works best against many units of light infantry like Footmen or Ghouls, but Huntresses are excellent at dealing with these, too, so you usually can just leave those to them and use your hero to deal with the only other threat - enemy heroes. And Mana Burn is much better for that.
• Now I should probably mention though that your strategy is absolutely correct - a Demon Hunter with Huntresses (and Dryads and Bears of the Claw later) is exactly the right thing you should usually play, and is one of the most effective things a Night Elf can do. So, well done regarding that.
• I recommend not using the moonwell autocast. That way, you can direct which units should get the healing, so that it goes to the ones that really need it.
• Your micro in combat: Seems pretty solid overall, but you focus heroes somewhat too hard. It may work against the computer, because it doesn't micro that well, but a human player would have focused out one or two of your units, evaded with the hero well enough to buy the time to kill these units, and then run or teleported out, leaving you down two units. Especially when there are riflemen around, who kill huntresses very quickly (and would die quickly themselves if you focused them, but don't, as you chase after the hero). Always focus whatever is the greatest glass cannon around, i.e. which has the highest damage output to durability ratio; in that case, against Unarmoured huntresses with Normal damage, that would be Medium-armoured riflemen with Pierce damage.
• Do not get between the enemy force and creeps. It is the best situation imaginable for you when you catch the enemy while he is creeping (this is called a 'creepjack'); do not turn these creeps against yourself by being closer to them than the opponent.
• Nice pulling back hurt units. That's precisely what micro is all about.
• You didn't have to retreat from the fight at the computer's gold mine though; your hero still had high hit points and the creeps were beating up the computer's units; you could have pulled back only the hurt huntresses and killed some more of the computer's units with your Demon Hunter.
• You should get a shop at T1 (Tier 1, i.e. before upgrading your main building). At the very latest, once you hit T2 (your main building upgraded once), you should definitely have it; it has some very important items. Notably, you can get healing and mana potions there (and you should always have at least one healing potion on your heroes), and also replenish Town Portal Scrolls.
• Related to the last point, but so important I'll state it separately: Always, always, always have a Town Portal Scroll on your hero! If you are caught in a bad situation, it may mean the difference between losing one unit and losing your entire army, or between losing an expansion and saving it; I suspect not having Town Portal Scrolls when necessary may have lead to more games lost by new players than any other reason period.
• Sell the dual Cloak of Shadows. A second one of those does nothing at all.
• Very, very nice spending. Your gold never rose too high; that's excellent, few new players accomplish that.
• You can creep more aggressively. Green creep camps are for the beginning; when you have eight huntresses, you don't want to waste your time with them, unless they really happen to be exactly on your way so they cost you no time at all. At that point, you want to move on to stronger creep camps, to get experience more quickly and to find better items.
• When one of your units is hit by a Lightning Shield, pull it out of the formation so it doesn't hurt the units around it.
• Once you hit T2, you may want to build less huntresses and more T2 units, i.e. concentrate your limited resources more on Druids and Dryads. You may want to get a second Ancient of Lore for that purpose, too.
• Do not get both Immolation and Mana Burn. You run through your mana really quickly if you do that. Get one of them and Evasion as a second; that also makes the Demon Hunter really, really difficult to kill.
• When you set up an expansion, check for enemy expansions. If you could expo, why not your enemy, too, and killing expansions while preserving one's own is the best way to get an advantage at the game. Also, while you check for enemy expansions you have a fair chance of running into the enemy or getting so close to his base you can harrass their base; that provides a nice diversion to your expansion, making it more likely it will come up, rather than being spotted and destroyed before it can finish.
• Get T3 more quickly. One of the most important things in a Night Elf army are Master-level Druids of the Claw - you really want the combat power of those bears. Before they can morph to bears, they are Unarmoured and die really quickly when focused by riflemen; once they morph into bears, they are Heavy-armoured killing machines with massive damage output. Try to have them as quickly as possible.
• Remember to use Roar. You did so in the later battles, but forgot in some of the earlier ones when you already had druids.
• Focusing the altar where the hero was reviving was exactly the right thing to do. Good thinking there.

I hope you will find this somewhat useful.

[Faulty]

Very useful, actually. And yeah, I accidentally left immolation on.

Anyway, as far as combat micro. I had my Demonhunter and Huntresses in one control group, some excess Huntresses in another, Druids in a third and Dryads in another. Would you suggest I focus an entire control group on single units then? I've generally been letting melee units other than my hero do their own thing.

Should I get more heroes?

[Winterwind]

Anyway, as far as combat micro. I had my Demonhunter and Huntresses in one control group, some excess Huntresses in another, Druids in a third and Dryads in another. Would you suggest I focus an entire control group on single units then? I've generally been letting melee units other than my hero do their own thing.

It is difficult to focus efficiently with large groups of melee units, so I would just let them do their thing; on the other hand, huntresses have a much bigger range than regular melee units, so with them, I'd actually try to focus the riflemen, or whichever ranged units the enemy happens to have (because those are really dangerous to hunts).

Should I get more heroes?

I would suggest you do so, at least once you feel you are ready to handle them (reminder again, F1 is a permanent hotkey to your first hero, F2 to your second hero, etc.; this makes handling multiple heroes much easier). I find two heroes are almost always better than just one (three heroes are debatable, as the experience is split somewhat thin, then).
Good second choices for Night Elves are Keepers of the Grove (with Entangle/Thorn Aura) or Wardens (with Shadow Strike/Fan of Knives), personally I prefer the Keeper, as well as some neutral heroes, especially Pandaren Brewmasters and Beastmasters.
Priestesses of the Moon tend to be used more as first heroes as alternative to the Demon Hunter (with Trueshot Aura/Searing Arrows) or in larger multiplayer games where more units benefit from their powerful aura.