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

[Miscast_Mage]

Spoiler

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Stained glass yayness!

Hmm, I don't have a mic, though I'll happily join in the conference. I'll make sure to have a mic for next week, though. I feel I should apologise in advance, but I don't have the best hearing, so pre-emptive sowwies for all the inevitable times I'm going to have to ask you all to repeat something.

So, I've added winterwind on skype. I assume that shall be enough?

[Nargan]

Spoiler

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Stained glass yayness!

Hmm, I don't have a mic, though I'll happily join in the conference. I'll make sure to have a mic for next week, though. I feel I should apologise in advance, but I don't have the best hearing, so pre-emptive sowwies for all the inevitable times I'm going to have to ask you all to repeat something.

So, I've added winterwind on skype. I assume that shall be enough?

That depends on whether or not you have an annoying laugh.

[Bunny of Faith]

So, I've added winterwind on skype. I assume that shall be enough?

Aye, when it comes to Friday he'll just add you to the group call and from there you can add the rest of us, if you like.

[Miscast_Mage]

Man, that was a fun session. Hope to see you guys again next week!

[Winterwind]

Here's a remindy reminder: We have a session tomorrow! Hope to see you all there!

[Winterwind]

And reminder again: Next session tomorrow! Hope to see you all there.

[faceroll]

Oh man, I just these games this week. Started laddering. Macro is easy peasy after getting brutalized in Starcraft 2. My micro is very rusty. Lose too many units to creeps.

[Legoshrimp]

Oh man, I just these games this week. Started laddering. Macro is easy peasy after getting brutalized in Starcraft 2. My micro is very rusty. Lose too many units to creeps.

Wait there is macro in WC3? I dont remember this...

[Winterwind]

Reminder: Our next session is tomorrow. Hope to see you all there!

Oh man, I just these games this week. Started laddering. Macro is easy peasy after getting brutalized in Starcraft 2. My micro is very rusty. Lose too many units to creeps.

That's why the first hero for most races is usually one that can either summon units (Archmage, Far Seer), so that they can tank the damage for your army, one that can heal (Death Knight) or one that can tank for the rest of your army (Demon Hunter). There are other viable starts, but the above are usually the safest and also the ones most commonly used, even in high level play. Also, you usually want an early shop, for healing items (or Rods of Necromancy if you are Undead, which are absolutely crucial for your creeping).

[faceroll]

That's why the first hero for most races is usually one that can either summon units (Archmage, Far Seer), so that they can tank the damage for your army, one that can heal (Death Knight) or one that can tank for the rest of your army (Demon Hunter). There are other viable starts, but the above are usually the safest and also the ones most commonly used, even in high level play. Also, you usually want an early shop, for healing items (or Rods of Necromancy if you are Undead, which are absolutely crucial for your creeping).

Yeah, my favorite is AM + militia fast expand. It's map dependent, but so OP. Unlike fast expand in SC, it's also MORE resistant to harass/rushes, since you've got an abundance of footmen and militia.

I find undead is weak on early creeping, and with rods, it doesn't really matter what your first hero is. I guess the big thing that summons beetles is alright, but I pretty much universally go DK/spider thing with stun spell.

If you time the spikey stun spell right, can you deny units from teleporting back with a hero? I've heard it's possible, but never been able to pull it off.

[u-gotNOgame]

Yeah, my favorite is AM + militia fast expand. It's map dependent, but so OP. Unlike fast expand in SC, it's also MORE resistant to harass/rushes, since you've got an abundance of footmen and militia.

I find undead is weak on early creeping, and with rods, it doesn't really matter what your first hero is. I guess the big thing that summons beetles is alright, but I pretty much universally go DK/spider thing with stun spell.

If you time the spikey stun spell right, can you deny units from teleporting back with a hero? I've heard it's possible, but never been able to pull it off.

Hopefully Winter will back me up(he's a much better UD player than I);DK is usually the proper first choice however in most cases you're going to want to go Lich. The Lich is capable of dealing massive amounts of damage to clumped units plus the slow is quite powerful. In fact, I feel like the Crypt Lord (the spider) is among the weakest Undead hero's.

For creeping DK/Crypt Fiends + a rod with proper application of Death Coil means almost no damage taken creeping (let the skeletons and fiends tank). You get a little later start but if you're that worried you can grab an extra ghoul and then put him back on lumber duty.

As far as breaking channeling, I'm not sure you can stop town portal but other channeling spells like tranquility, and draining spells. The best part of snares is really the ability to stop enemy hero's from running away or to finish them off.

-UGNG

[faceroll]

Hopefully Winter will back me up(he's a much better UD player than I);DK is usually the proper first choice however in most cases you're going to want to go Lich. The Lich is capable of dealing massive amounts of damage to clumped units plus the slow is quite powerful. In fact, I feel like the Crypt Lord (the spider) is among the weakest Undead hero's.

For creeping DK/Crypt Fiends + a rod with proper application of Death Coil means almost no damage taken creeping (let the skeletons and fiends tank). You get a little later start but if you're that worried you can grab an extra ghoul and then put him back on lumber duty.

As far as breaking channeling, I'm not sure you can stop town portal but other channeling spells like tranquility, and draining spells. The best part of snares is really the ability to stop enemy hero's from running away or to finish them off.

-UGNG

DK/fiend is my universal undead opener. It's totally unimaginative, but it works. I get crypt lord as second hero for control and tajking. 2nd heroes are easy to focus down at T2, as army sizes are bigger, first heros are level 3, etc. I also find that fragile melee agi heroes, like blademasters, that decide to target the crypt lord go down a lot faster thanks to spiked carapace.

What I meant with town portal is that the hero goes home but leaves his army. Airborne units are untargetable and invincible, so town portal *may* not function on them.

[Winterwind]

Yeah, my favorite is AM + militia fast expand. It's map dependent, but so OP. Unlike fast expand in SC, it's also MORE resistant to harass/rushes, since you've got an abundance of footmen and militia.

It's really map dependent. On Lost Temple, yes, absolutely - that's why Lost Temple is known as a Humans-map. On maps where distances between your main and expansions are longer, you won't be able to bring your militia in in time (as you can't call in militia at town halls other than the one you start with unless you upgrade them, which you usually don't want to do). It still can work, but a well timed attack can throw quite a wrench into your plans.

(at this point, I should probably state my credentials - I used to be pretty good at this game - never playing enough to get higher than level twenty-something, but considered strong enough by the system to occasionally face people from the top 200 of the solo ladder (and actually beat them, too) - that was some five or six years ago, though, which was followed by a long period of me getting rather rusty, and now not having played pretty much at all in quite a while, so I may be a bit disconnected with the current meta. Though last I checked, it wasn't changing that quickly, so what I say is probably still accurate.)

I find undead is weak on early creeping, and with rods, it doesn't really matter what your first hero is. I guess the big thing that summons beetles is alright, but I pretty much universally go DK/spider thing with stun spell.

Undead are really good at early creeping, actually, quite possibly the best amongst the races, even, you just have to do it right.

Creeping with Ghouls is a bit of a pain, especially on maps with strong creeps; Fiends make it much more comfortable (not to mention, make the game overall easier in most situations), so at least while learning I'd suggest going for those. And then it goes
- start with crypt+graveyard
- altar third
- ziggurath
- when the crypt spawns, one ghoul (for lumber)
- shop. Start building crypt fiends. Between the first and second one, add another ziggurath.
If done right, by the time your hero (who should be a Death Knight; Death Knights make creeping much easier as well, and are generally the most useful UD heroes anyhow) spawns, you will have two fiends and a shop, so you can immediately grab a Rod of Necromancy to revive 2 Skeletons at your Graveyard. With 2 Skeletons and 2 Fiends (and more fiends incoming; I strongly recommend rallying your Crypt to your hero, so the fiends join you immediately), you just go for the next suitable creep camp, and start by focusing something weak; as soon as it's dead, you use the Rod again. Always have your Skeletons tank; if that's not an option, have your Fiends tank and heal them with your Death Knight. Never ever, under any circumstances, have the Death Knight tank; he's the only one whom you can't heal.

If you time the spikey stun spell right, can you deny units from teleporting back with a hero? I've heard it's possible, but never been able to pull it off.

I'm not entirely sure - that's the sort of thing I definitely knew at some point, but have forgotten since - but I believe it works, yes. The window is extremely short, though.

Hopefully Winter will back me up(he's a much better UD player than I);DK is usually the proper first choice however in most cases you're going to want to go Lich.

To clarify: UGNG means you usually want a DK first (actually, the only time when you generally want something else is when it's a mirror, though there are obviously fancy strategies that go for something different altogether), but you pretty much always want to add a Lich as your second hero. UD (and Humans) usually want to go for a full three heroes in the long run (unlike Orcs or Night Elves, who are much more inclined to limit themselves to two or even just one).

The Lich is capable of dealing massive amounts of damage to clumped units plus the slow is quite powerful. In fact, I feel like the Crypt Lord (the spider) is among the weakest Undead hero's.

He's a good third hero for the lategame, where his AoE stun hits very many units at once. Basically, if there is some enemy hero you want to at least temporarily shut down so they can't get off a crucial spell at the right time (Paladin or enemy Death Knight would be prime examples), you'll go for a Dread Lord third, otherwise, when it's more about dealing with the whole army, you'll prefer a Crypt Lord. He is also good for when you want a really strong early game (which is a bit of a curveball strategy, as Undead are a lategame race and usually prefer to plays that are strong in the long run, rather than the short run - as such, it's obviously useful for when you want to do something unexpected, not exactly what I'd recommend to a new player to focus on, though).

For creeping DK/Crypt Fiends + a rod with proper application of Death Coil means almost no damage taken creeping (let the skeletons and fiends tank). You get a little later start but if you're that worried you can grab an extra ghoul and then put him back on lumber duty.

Don't think that's necessary. A rush hitting so early that it would make a difference whether you went for a third ghoul, rather than straight for spiders, would be pretty darn ridiculous. I'm not even sure anything other than a tower rush could pull this off, and against a tower rush, spiders will be much more useful either way.

As far as breaking channeling, I'm not sure you can stop town portal but other channeling spells like tranquility, and draining spells. The best part of snares is really the ability to stop enemy hero's from running away or to finish them off.

He's not talking about interrupting the TP channeling (which you can't; the hero is invulnerable after all), he's talking about knocking up the enemy units just as the TP is about to trigger, so they are in the air when the hero teleports away, as he has heard (and I think he's right) that they are not going to teleport with the hero then.

EDIT:

DK/fiend is my universal undead opener. It's totally unimaginative, but it works. I get crypt lord as second hero for control and tajking. 2nd heroes are easy to focus down at T2, as army sizes are bigger, first heros are level 3, etc. I also find that fragile melee agi heroes, like blademasters, that decide to target the crypt lord go down a lot faster thanks to spiked carapace.

Honestly, I think you're missing out on too much. A Lich's Frost Nova offers so much damage and utility (for preventing enemy units from running away) that I'd pretty much never take a Crypt Lord over a Lich as second hero. There is this neat little synergy between DK and CL where a CL summons beetles for the DK to devour and keep himself alive, while the DK's heal makes the CL unkillable, but then you are still missing out on a Lich and also forgo the DK's aura, which is far, far, far too important for an UD army to do so easily. And yes, Int heroes are more fragile (which is why I wouldn't ever get a Lich as a third hero, for example), but not to the point where they don't work as second heroes just fine. Just make sure to heal him and maybe keep a healing or invulnerability potion on him just in case (having healing/invulnerability potions on heroes is a good habit to get into anyway).

[faceroll]

I've always really wanted to like the lich, but frost nova has too long a cool down and costs too much mana. On top of that, he doesn't have very good other abilities. Frost armor requires micro and stuff, and the cool down on dark ritual may as well be forever. Maybe once I get bored of dk/cl I'll switch it up, but I'll probably just go for dark archer harass if the enemy isn't NE.

Human tri hero is my favorite. I lost a 3v3 once to human tri-hero. It was literally three of us vs their last remaining player on wheel of war. We had the whole map, and the one guy pretty much solo'd all of us with level 10 tri-hero, one base, and several square miles of towers. Extremely frustrating.

I either go mk/pally/archmage, or archmage/mk/pally, depending on map. I find with human shop, I can creep just fine with mk as tank.

When getting skills for heroes, how do you pick skills? I usually pick one active as my main spell (wind walk, impale, stormbolt) and a passive as my secondary (crit strike, spiked carapace, bash). Is that wise? I tend not to invest very heavily in items- early game it's non-combat consumables, boots of speed as soon as I can afford them, followed by an orb when I can afford it and it's available, and I remember. And of course all those purchases would be postponed if I had to repurchase a scroll of tp.

Maybe I should buy more scrolls of protection/healing/speed and pot more often. I have a bad habit of not using pots when I should. Starting to get better, though. I really like finding health/mana stones, for that reason.

[Winterwind]

I've always really wanted to like the lich, but frost nova has too long a cool down and costs too much mana. On top of that, he doesn't have very good other abilities. Frost armor requires micro and stuff, and the cool down on dark ritual may as well be forever. Maybe once I get bored of dk/cl I'll switch it up, but I'll probably just go for dark archer harass if the enemy isn't NE.

That's why you bring mana potions on a Lich, as well as a Rod of Necromancy to create skellies and devour them.
And his mana issues go away when he reaches higher levels.

There is one further reason why a Lich is so important to have though. The Lich is the only ranged UD hero, which means he is the only one who can reliably apply the effect of the Orb of Corruption. Any other hero will first have to walk up to the unit you want to focus; with a Lich, you pretty much instantly increase the damage your entire army deals to the target you focus by something like 30%. Which is... really, really, really, really strong.

Human tri hero is my favorite. I lost a 3v3 once to human tri-hero. It was literally three of us vs their last remaining player on wheel of war. We had the whole map, and the one guy pretty much solo'd all of us with level 10 tri-hero, one base, and several square miles of towers. Extremely frustrating.

Mmm, yeah, once something like that is set up, it can get difficult to get rid of. One thing to remember about Humans is that their towers, unlike everyone else's except for pre-upgrade Orcs, are Heavy armoured, not Fortified, so Siege is actually not that good (the range is awesome, of course, but the damage sucks. Heavy air units (Frost Wyrms/Destroyers, Gryphons, Chimeras) may often be a preferable choice against them.

Addendum to that: When playing Night Elves, one should generally not research the Chimeras' siege-attack when fighting Humans, because they will use that instead of their regular attack against towers then, which is infinitely inferior.

I either go mk/pally/archmage, or archmage/mk/pally, depending on map. I find with human shop, I can creep just fine with mk as tank.

Yes, either one of those is a viable way to play Humans, the second one being more common.

When getting skills for heroes, how do you pick skills? I usually pick one active as my main spell (wind walk, impale, stormbolt) and a passive as my secondary (crit strike, spiked carapace, bash). Is that wise?

It depends on the hero in question, there are exceptions, but generally speaking (and including the three heroes you mention here), yes, that's how one should usually do it.

I tend not to invest very heavily in items- early game it's non-combat consumables, boots of speed as soon as I can afford them, followed by an orb when I can afford it and it's available, and I remember. And of course all those purchases would be postponed if I had to repurchase a scroll of tp.

That's pretty much how one should do it. Orbs aren't really required on all heroes - the Human orb is pretty much useless, the Undead one is so powerful that if it was the only thing that Undead gained at T3 it would probably still be worth rushing to T3, but is far more useful on a Lich, less so on everyone else, the Orc and Night Elf orbs are useful, but mostly just on some single heroes working a lot with their attacks. And I make purchases of boots of speed highly dependent on the heroes I have - for quite many, I don't really see much need to get any.

Maybe I should buy more scrolls of protection/healing/speed and pot more often. I have a bad habit of not using pots when I should. Starting to get better, though. I really like finding health/mana stones, for that reason.

Having a potion of healing or invulnerability on every hero is pretty much mandatory in my book, unless you have a strong healer like a Paladin or Death Knight, in which case it's only mandatory on the healer (though still highly useful on the other ones as well). Also potions of mana, on any hero prone to running out of mana too soon.

[faceroll]

Man, warcraft 3 is easy. I regularly play and beat level 18+. I think I've even won vs. a level 28. They probably aren't playing as hard as they should when they see me at level 3 or whatever.

Meanwhile, I am getting trashed by silver players in SC2.

[Winterwind]

Level really isn't that much of a representation of skill. Well, it is partially, especially at really high levels, but for the most part, it's more about consistent playing. If one keeps playing on and on, one will ultimately rise to moderately high levels.

And personally, if I got matched with someone of level 3 at level 28? I'd be much more scared than when matched against someone of level 22. That level 3 is much more likely to be the smurf of some really good player rising at crazy speed through the levels.

___


Reminder, everyone: Tomorrow is our next weekly session! I'm still gone (and will be gone till Sunday - it's pure coincidence I found a window of time to post this at all) - but I wish you all tons and tons of fun. And be there! My presence really, really, really is not mandatory, contrary to malicious rumours!

[nooblade]

I am so sorry! I must have missed MONTHS of the weekly Warcraft 3 session! How could I have forgotten it...? And somehow even I abandoned all those ambitious war3 related projects (and to be honest, most of them weren't suited to it). And my schedule is so busy now that I usually can't possibly make it. Can I ever make it up to you all?

Whoa, I'm surprised anyone was even online. They must have read my mind about visiting today.

Aww, they're not autohosting swat anymore on the custom games list.

Edit: Anyway, I give up on trying to connect to a hostbot for swat.

See you later?

[Winterwind]

Forgotten about something we've had for years? Well, I've heard of stranger things.

Anyhow, reminder: Next session tomorrow. Hope to see you all there!

[Bunny of Faith]

Forgotten about something we've had for years? Well, I've heard of stranger things.

Anyhow, reminder: Next session tomorrow. Hope to see you all there!

But, Skyrim! Tommorow! How will I ever decide? D:

[Winterwind]

And reminder again: Session tomorrow. Hope to see you there.

[Winterwind]

And again: Session tomorrow, hope to see you all there.

[Woodzyowl]

Since I'm here, and know how much Winter hates tri-posting, I'll go ahead and say it:
Session Tomorrow

[Winterwind]

Thanks, Woodzy. Though formally, we don't really have Sunday sessions anymore (usually, we go for League of Legends on Sundays instead).

Anyhow! Reminder: Session tomorrow. Hope to see you all there!

[The Orange Zergling]

Hi guys, just wanted to let you know that I'll be gone from December 6th through the 13th on a family trip, so I won't be able to make the sessions then (incidentally, that's also one of the reasons why I was gone yesterday; making preparations and such). See you guys in a week.

[Winterwind]

Reminder: Next session tomorrow. Hope to see you all there!

[Winterwind]

And reminder once more: Next session tomorrow, hope to see you all there!

[Winterwind]

Since I'll be gone to first family, then friends for the holidays, I very likely will not have time to post any kind of reminders during that time (nevermind attending the sessions). My apologies for the inconvenience.

Also, for the same reason, already Merry Christmas and Happy New Year's in advance, all of you!

[Demons_eye]

Hello everyone! A friend, Shadow Archmagi, and I have gotten this game running again and wanted to know if anyone was up for some custom games. I know there are people playing once in a while, as seen above, but wanted to know if anyone was up for games like Tides of Blood, Binders, Advent of the Zenith, or some other map not brought to mind now.

[Winterwind]

Ah, dangit, completely forgot to post a reminder yesterday. So, everyone, reminder: We have a session today.

Hello everyone! A friend, Shadow Archmagi, and I have gotten this game running again and wanted to know if anyone was up for some custom games. I know there are people playing once in a while, as seen above, but wanted to know if anyone was up for games like Tides of Blood, Binders, Advent of the Zenith, or some other map not brought to mind now.

We play pretty much only custom games anyhow. Though none of the maps you mentioned specifically (that's always negotiable, though). If you wish to join us, we play every Friday.