Recent changes: -Spent more time in putting trees perfectly next to each other. -Spread camps out a little more and made sure everything but expo-creeps are set to 'camp' -Made southern mid expansion slightly more roomy, to be on par with the other 3. -Toughened the mid creeps a little bit with some more spells, AoE, and added a couple units per camp. -Mid now drops a level 7 artifact instead of level glyph of omniscience (though, as a frequent potm user, I don't think it's that big a deal) -Evened out everyone's base entrances. They are all about the same size now. -Added critters -Added some doodads like rocks and some glaciers to make it look a little nicer in some spots. -Made all naturals more in unison. -Maybe a few more things that I don't remember.
Its still in beta mode... I really like the idea of it, but I'm not exactly sure what in it needs to be changed, if anything, or if a lot of stuff (whether terrain, doodads, balance, or something else). Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Mains set to 12,500 gold Nats to 17,500 Mid expos @ 15,000
Lots of creep camps, some with fallen creep revives (I love these things, so I added a couple.. like level 5-6 creeps000)
More than 1 type of merc camp, basically all the ice ones. Mainly for the web spinners and minotaur warrior things.
From my testing, it seems to actually be pretty fast paced, even though you can play it campy.
Long 3 way against towering night elf with level 10 tinker versus 3 level 10 heroes orc heroes and me. The right side of the map was left forgotten so I charmed all the creeps and won!
Lusted chims with high level DR, Alchemist, MK, and breakers. Level 6+ heroes were dying in a single bolt. Starting race was elf.
Base in the same game. Unbreakable!
The other side.
Ents + Treants! (went on to win this game with mass hunts versus mass tp + tank/gryphon from another human)
Had an awesome past couple months with you guys that I probably wouldn't have been able to have if I didn't get sinus surgery and half to relax for a while, but it was the only time to get it with the wedding coming up and all. I've had more fun with this FFA bot then I have had since 3's RT in Reign of Chaos days. Hopefully when I get back to playing some games in a few months, with my now 20x greater FFA experience, and hopefully a non-wifi internet connection, I will be able to do much better than 45%, though it will be hard for me to cut out my mess-around strategies.
Its been good and I want to apologize to any of you if I have offended you, namely
Maga, sorry for teaming you whenever opportunity presented itself. Qwest, sorry for getting mad at you all the time, your a chill dude. Mog, your tinker is very nice and I don't actually think mine is better (though it is close!) Seksi, you play well and I will get you when I come back FD, I almost always get mad at you in a game and I know everyone manips it just bothers me sometimes. Anyways, sorry for any rage. LW. You always seem mad at me. Sorry for whatever I did. Anyone and everyone else I might have gotten frustrated and mad at. I usually am more chill after a long break, and that will be good for me.
Thanks Ugri for the bot, it was the best thing to happen to war3 for me in many years.
I'll catch up with you guys in the forums in a couple weeks and I might play a few games, but I won't really be able to mass games like this till winter break or something.
I remember reading it years ago, and I've tried googling but I can't find it. It was from a player that apparently people respected because he didn't go chippo all the time.
So if anyone noticed, Clan FML made a FFA public ladder bot with 6-8 man ffa games that fill-up in 5 minutes max, and I have been massing games like crazy under the name "Dovekie", on which I am currently ranked 4th. I got surgery on my sinuses a few weeks ago so that gave me like 3 weeks of nothing but Warcraft, so I am getting a bit more experience in it. I have been making up plenty of different strategies, and finding out what works best for me, and have also found much that just doesn't work well at all.
A particular game mechanic that I have been experimenting with is the extra XP bonus for a solo hero, and then getting a second hero later. Or just going two hero's as apposed to three, so that when everyone else has 6-5-5 or so I will have 8-7. Panda Alchemist is my favorite 2 hero strategy and I tried a solo Pit Lord for a while but it just doesn't pan out very well in the end ever. But a solo beast master DOES work, and its been working extremely well for me. So I am gonna write a guide about it, if anyone else wants to have a stab at it, or maybe it might inspire others to make up some of their own stuff.
The Beast Master has received more nerfs than any other hero in Warcraft 3, including his strength, every single one of his spells, even his ultimate, mana costs, and his armor. There is obviously something special about this guy to receive so many nerfs, yet he is still strong regardless.
In a nutshell, this strategy involves these 3 phases- -Using a solo beast master and early push to kill 1 or 2 people next to you, giving you access to more mines, and also to give your beast master level 7-10 very early. -Get a potm(or possibly panda), work on infrastructure, tower up/well up your mines, level up your potm, scout the enemy, harass expos and join in battles. -Play as normal FFA, relying on strengths such as double starfall base raiding (more on this later), after-battle battles, low supply possibilities, and economy/infrastructure advantages.
Skill order should almost always be: Quill/Hawk/Quill/Hawk/Quill/Hawk/Stampede/Bear/Bear/Bear You might want to get Hawk when you hit level 3 if you are cross mapping creeps and have low mana. Also you might want to get stampede at level 6 if you need to siege a base, though hawk is usually better as its so good early game. Also you can get bear early if you had a really bad early game, and you need more units, though its more expensive to keep your mana up.
I'll go into what the actual strategy is, then I'll delve into why it works so well:
-Start with an early archer or early hunt tavern build. Archers if the maps creeps are hard, or hunts if on a map like deadlock, though archers still work fine.
-Immediately kill the creeps at the closest goldmine and fast expo. You might want to throw down a second AoW and a couple wells at the expo to protect it better. You don't need to tech super early but tech at least within a minute or two of throwing your expo down. You should probably get 2 AoW's regardless
-Creep like a mad man, prioritizing on creeps that you know have good item drops for your hero, or tomes. In goldshire there are 16 tomes in the center(4 of which are level 2 tomes), and the only good drops are the orange ogre/troll camps on the side, so you should probably go tome hunting. Other maps you would want to go for the artifact items/or level 5 permanents, though make sure a merc camp is in your creeping route, where you should stick a wisp. Never stop making hunts and archers, and get 1/1 upgrades if you want, too. You should hit level 5 very quickly. Buy a shredder if available.
-When you hit tier 2, you want to throw down a Lore and an Ancient of Wind, where you should get a couple dotts, a dryad and a bear with rejuv(most likely for your BM). Continue your tech and well production. Ignore upkeep, just pass it like you don't even care. You should hit level 5 around the time your dotc/dott/dryad is produced. At this time the items on your beast master should be something like this: Town Portal. Boots of Speed. Scroll of Prot. Scroll of Heal Invul potion. (good item drop/mana potion/staff)
-Now it is time to hit someone, preferably not a "good" undead, as its difficult to get too much exp off them cause it will be hard to kill their heros...And I always find that if I do kill them I also lose everything in the process.. Its just so painstaking to hit an ud base.. Hopefully you have scouted the players in the game and can pursue a good plan of action. Get mercs(really, this part is important, as it will add to the immense overkill) right before you hit them, and you can even pick up some glaives as well. I usually leave my base with full mana AND a clarity potion used so that I can have a few quills up before I reach them and still have full mana. You can use it before you leave your base to replace its spot with another item.
-Basically you should have 60-75 worth of food of hunts archers mercs, with a dryad, a bear and a few dotts. What happens next is you STEAM ROLL them. I have lost games using this strategy, but I have never not demolished someone at this part in the game. Someone will defend you now and again, but you should still gain 2-3 levels off of it, and they will be pretty crippled after and you can just walk back with a AMS potion this time and do the same thing again except now they lose their base too because of stampede. The hardest part here is killing people in a way that will make it so they don't leave before you can kill them--you want to get at LEAST level 7. So feel free to lose units and wait to kill their heros.. You don't want to keep your hunts anyway, and its better to feed xp to someone who is going to leave.
(This guy scouted me and realized what was gonna happen, so he started massing dotts and dotc out of his production buildings cause he knew he wouldnt have enough chims in time but it wasn't enough. You know that the BM will be level 7 in 15 seconds and level 9 in another 2 minutes.)
(You can picture what happened 60 seconds ago)
(I'm bolding this paragraph because it is by far the most important) -Now that you have killed someone and have a level 7-8 Beast, its time to become a little more passive. This part of the game is your weakest and strongest point, so the key is to play this part very well. You are now slightly weak to being hit by a tier 3 strong army, BUT not entirely so. You would be amazed at what you can defend with a level 8 beast master, some ancients and some wells. On the other hand, you are strong because you have a very high level hero. If it looks like you might be up against a strong orc ground user late game, you want to invest in chippo. If not... just throw up like 3 more lores, 3 more winds, and start heavily investing into your infrastructure. I'm talking more wells, pick up your ancients and put them in good spots, build a few AP's, and utilize the part of the map you conquered and get 2 more possible expos if you can. You will want 2-3 wells and 4 AP's. A few AoW's wouldn't go amiss. You will want a potm now, unless you plan on facing undead air, in which case you will almost certainly need a Panda, else you will lose hippo/garg wars to nova. But ~80% of the time I would suggest potm. I started using searing arrow because the hawk can scout decently and you will have some sentinels lying around from your hunts and that 20/30 free, armor ignoring claws of attack on the potm is nice. The fact that you get access to more expos earlier is the strength of this strategy and that you still have high level heros in the process. You will want to go attack people because you have such a high level hero but DON'T. This is always my biggest mistake. Your hero is high enough. You can level your potm through creeping and harassing or just through big battles later on. She is mostly there as dps/item carrier/aura provider, and late game starfall user.
-I say that ground army is better with the beast master, mostly because of mountain giants and dryads. Mountain giants just soak up so much damage, even against good players. They are big and fat and the enemy has to remicro everything everytime one of them taunts. Sometimes its just hard to ignore all the summons, because 3 roared/aura'd quills eats through air, so the enemy needs to make dispell. Say that quills count as 3 food, the hawk counts as 3, and the bears count as 4. Thats around 20 extra food you get out of thin air, with good dps/bashes/magic/splash. This is why dryads work pretty good because they are good anti-caster, and anti anti-caster. This leaves you in a very good position against everything human can throw at you except for mortars, but obviously you might need to switch your army comp just like in any ffa game. Thats why you need those extra expos. You kill someone early and you are entitled to them.. So you protect them. Mountain giant dryad is also pretty good against chippo. Against orc, its fine but you want to add dotts and faeries, and hippos if they have wyverns. If they are pure ground, you can actually compete with them if you have both your ults up, but they will just run, so better off to defend with ground in the short run, and get pure chims in the long run. Against undead air you just need a panda and hippos. Archers can work but you need lots of scrolls, dotts to keep their heros up, and hippos/hipporiders to counter the destroyers. Easier to make a panda, and archers are slow/hard to use/low health anyway, but you dont have to use panda/air. The potm can still work if you want, and she is preferable in the long run.
(I know you wanna go kill something, but do this 2-3 times first.)
(this paragraph is important too, and I need to follow this advice more) -So like I said, this part of the game you should really work on infrastructure. You can probably go kill someone else now that you have your level 8 beast, but it isn't in your best interests. You might get level 10 out of it and get teamed really quickly, and expo too fast while going to 100 and it just wont work well. You are better off using this advantage to secure your side of the map/creep your potm up and get all your necessary production buildings and tech upgrades. I've found I can sit at 50 food better with a beast because of his ability to summon a mini army, but 80 is safer.
-Just play the game like normal now, taking advantage of your strengths, which I'll get into a little more depth now.
Here I want to talk about why this all works well. I'll do it as a pro/con section.
Pros: -Other than the tinker and I guess the Dark Ranger (though she has some flaws), the beast master is the fastest creeper at your disposal. With level 2 quills(.9 CD with frenzy and 28 avg dmg) you can really creep some of the heaviest creeps around. This means can have first share of any of the creeps you want. It also means that you won't have too much trouble getting a quick level 5 on your hero.
-Getting a str hero up to such a high level so quick ensure that you have a strong tank the whole game. He will generally have 1300-1700hp with 6-10 armor.
-You have a strong early game because of unit composition/beast master. You can even keep tabs on a noob with a blade master using your hawk.
-Your food count is different from your actual food count, due to summons.
-Forces the enemy to make anti summon units, for which you can prepare a counter. If they don't make anti summon units, you get a larger army.
-Insanely useful solo hero XP bonus that very few people utilize.
(double starfall, he never stood a chance)
-Double Starfall. I know its not double starfall but thats what I call it. Its when you stampede and starfall at the same time with AMS potions on your heros. Basically the enemy has to run. It would be pretty dumb not to. The great part about this is if you stick yourself in their base and do this, they either have to fight you and die, or lose everything in their main base (especially if you have chims). Its a great way to fight human with mass tp/tanks. Keep killing their castle so they can't make tanks.
-Stampede is great against tanks, and you have access to it probably before any humans on the map have more than 2 of them. Stampede is also good against fortified bases/ground armies/chokes. I used to think it was bad in solo, but I have been finding a lot of use for it in FFA. If you need like 40 more seconds to get 5 chims out, or 5-10 hippos or what not it can help stall the enemy too. Its kind of like a "don't enter this area with your ground units, thanks very much" spell. Hopefully you will see some good examples in the replays I have.
-Hero Arena. Usually night elf is pretty bad in hero arena, especially if your just running around with a DR panda KOTG against AM/MK/Pally or BM/SH/TC. Well the beast is awesome in hero arena mostly because of double blinking 1200 hp bashing bears. Especially if you have a dryad or a dott with you, you can just dish the damage OUT with all those summons. He might be one of the only heros that can solo a strong blade master, though to be fair he will probably out level him.
(the reason the blade is running upward toward me is cause I just blinked a bear at him from underneath. This shows the kind of stuff that commonly happens to me after both our armies are obliterated. Mainly I still have one and he doesn't.)
-Level 3 hawk early enough is awesome against all races, orc especially. Against an orc you just want to start taking out his burrows. They drop SUPER fast, and you should have stampede about the time he gets fortified so your still good to go. Against human its great against towers if you get something else to tank. Also destroys militia. Against undead you want to right click a statue with it and forget about it . Against elf it will help against bears and can get chims but is otherwise pretty useless due to hippos/dryads, something that all elfs usually have. It loses its battle effectivness in large 80/100 fights, but it shines in lower food battles against anything with heavy armor, and is great a canceling expos. Its like potm's scout that has the damage of a bloodlusted gryphon.
-Level 3 quills are awesome. If you get 3 of the them out early enough they just rip through everything. Their damage is very high for a piercing attack, and they get a free bloodlust ability. They gain effectiveness late game with a level 5 potm and roar, making their damage around that of bloodlusted wyverns/ aka frostwyrm melters.
-Blinking bears aren't super noticable in big battles though I am sure they would be if I could micro them better. I think they need to both be attacking something like a DK or a SH to be used to their full effect.
-I'd say he's one of the best skirmish heros available. You and your enemy run into each other with relatively small armies. 2 seconds later and you have a blinking bashing bear, a couple bloodlusted frostwyrm melters(quills), and an invisible gryphon.
Though there are all these good things about him, there are some obvious negatives to using him.
Cons: -If early game fails, you are stuck with a low level beast master. Doesn't sound fun to me and its only happened once, but I think I still won the game through feeding off noobs around me.
-Momentum strategy that uses powerful early game to lead into strong mid game. If this fails you are at a severe disadvantage.
-Most obvious con is that all of your heros ability create summons, and if they enemy dispells them all you have a strong tank, with a weaker starfall and nothing else. Though this gives you its own advantages as we talked about earlier.
-XP feeding. Those summons can feed some serious XP at times. Try not to lose too many battles/skirmishes.
-No disable other than cyclone and bash, which you need Level NINE to have, and more like level 10. Also no AoE if you chose not to go Panda. Though starfall/double starfall can work at times.
-Hunts are very moon well intensive units early game, so think about that. Kind of sucks never having any moon juice.
-Late game power comes from higher hero levels, and better economy, but actual hero power is less in large 100 battles, especially if your summons are gone. Thats why you need to get your advantages with higher heros, better economy, or when all else fails you can double starfall them at their base . People will generally cry out "team ne, he has level 9 hero already" something like that, and that sometimes sucks.
-Having only one hero early can run you into item storage problems and problems for insane right click hero focusers. Also having only 2 heros can give you item storage problems as well when you want to carry consumables and permanents.
-Situational, stationary channeling ultimates that cost 100 gold to use half the time.
In the spoiler I talk about why to choose the BM over some other heros and the advantages of a solo hero.
(click to show/hide)
The main question to consider is “why”? Couldn’t you make a rushing army but use a demon hunter with a kotg to do the same thing, if not maybe a little better, than a solo beast master? Yes and no, but more no. If you did the exact same thing, but instead you used the DH with KOTG, you gain obvious advantages. Your ability to focus heros goes up. You gain more item slots, with staffs as well. You have a slightly better tank with the demon hunter’s high armor and evasion, and the dh has very good dps, and you also set yourself up for a standard, moderately strong late game. But--- you lose some distinct advantages. You will have spent 425 gold and 100 wood on a second hero, which is quite a bit if you want to rush someone. You will have less units because of that, and no summons, which means a smaller army and much less damage soaking ability. Faerie Fire and dryad slow poison, with quills added dps will replace the Demon Hunters and Kotg’s hero focus ability. You also can't guarantee a kill on an enemy without those extra summons.
Getting that second hero also reduces the amount of experience that your first hero gains by 57.5%/65% (tier 2/3 respectively). 65% less experience is A LOT less. You will gain 50% exp(because 2 heros are present) as opposed to 115% or 130%. You will only gain 33% if you have 3 heros. 130% experience on your first hero is about 4 times as much experience as you would gain with 3 heros. If you are gonna use demon hunter/kotg(or anything else, really), you are better off continuing creeping and straight teching to more useful units.
I am not saying that the Beast Master and this strat is better than other heros and other strats. The warden is amazing at a high level, superman is superman, the pandas AoE can never be replaced, tranquility/thorns and entangle are impossible for elf to duplicate, BUT what I am saying is that this can work just fine and its a good alternative to general cookie cutter using a combination of dh/dr/panda/kotg/potm.
Been playing tons and tons of games on the FML bots these last few months, and have been learning a lot about FFA. So here is my giant wall of text:
The biggest thing that I've learned... and I think its more than just my opinion... is that orc and human are just slightly better than elf and undead. There is something about orc casters, warstomp & endurance aura, ww + critical strike, heal wave, strong towers, wards, spirit link, etc, that just puts them a little above night elf and undead. Same with human, though the with human its mainly just the tanks, massive armor, and the mass TP that gives them an edge. That being said, people seem ready to team orc/human players a little easier so I guess it can also be a curse. Two things that might make this theory untrue. One is anti-magic shield, which isn't utilized well enough or enough, and 2 is night elfs rushing potential. You can have a maxed out night elf army so fast, that unless the human or orc was preparing for you(and even if they were), you can probably kill them. But the games are adding up where I am fighting orcs or humans that reach an unkillable point that I can't seem to obtain when I am elf or undead.
List of things learned: (FYI this isn't a guide on how to win, for that you should ask better players) -Unlike 4 man FFA, going to 100 to finish off a player is almost always a bad idea. Because you are playing with 6-8 people, you should almost always wait until there are 2-4 people left before going 100, unless you want to surprise rush someone good that you think might be a big threat later. -I've been trying lots of different hero's and purposefully not using the Dark Ranger very much, but honestly she is just so good. But I would only choose her for elf and maybe orc. UD should stick to DL and humans need the MK and Pally. Silence + hex + stomp might be the best combo in FFA, at least to winning large army battles. -Undead-- I don't understand how anyone could not go dk/lich/dl. The only reason I wouldn't is if I didn't think I could get an infernal. But if I don't think I'm gonna get an infernal, I obviously am not planning on winning, but I'm always planning on winning (planning), so I always get dl. Sleep works as a good enough silence for me, but carrion/nova is just so important for hit and run crippling attacks if you are behind, that you can't go without him. -Undead has the most "tricks". On non tavern maps, you can, almost with a certainty, kill any nightelf with pure garg 1 frostie. This is also convenient because you can also kill any undead with the same army. You can straight tech gargs and kill mass air creeps, giving you a level 5 dk in the first few minutes. -Armor is better than you think. -Hipporiders are better than you think. With roar + level 3 aura they are tanky, bloodlusted, long ranged wyverns. -Mass teleport is better than you think. (Hard to imagine o.O, but if people could multitask perfectly, it should be almost an auto win, with enough tanks and gryphs) -Human army kills things the slowest. Gryphons aren't the greatest, neither are knights. Rifles don't do much damage. Tanks do low damage and need time to kill stuff. Heros become super tanky but never achieve killing speed of orc or ud. -Night elf has access to the greatest explosion army. By this I mean you can make the enemies entire ground disappear (excluding tanks) or their entire air disappear in the time it takes for a tp scroll to finish casting. Pure chims or pure hippos are sometimes the only things that can kill the enemies army, but then afterward you have a giant weakness to either mass ground or mass air. -As a night elf player, there are some armies that a human can make that you actually have no chance of beating unless you chose the right hero's and they are high enough levels. When the Tank count reaches enough to take care of any air you have, and he has enough gryphons to take out any bear threat you have, and his heros can negate yours, then you lose. You need a high level DH, Panda, AMS potm, tinker, in order to be able to beat them, and usually a combination of two of these. -When in doubt, summon your 3 RoC hero's (replacing the FS with the SH). Human = AM/MK/Pally. Just perfect. Has everything Human needs. Mobility, surivability, damage, stun, massive mana regen. Orc = BM/TC/SH. Once again, has everything you need. Completely absurd damage, ridiculous disables (I mean RIDICULOUS), and amazing heal. Elf = DH/KOTG/POTM. Sometimes we feel we need to get the panda or the dark ranger, and then we wonder why we are losing to mass tanks or we just can't kill the enemy at his base, but then we choose these hero's, that lets us have access to a sweet disable/hold, metamorphosis(aka battle winner), starfall(aka battle winner), tranquility, great aura, best scout, mana burn, high armor, and all of a sudden we win a game that we couldn't have with a panda/dr. You lose your ability to fight mass air as well, but stick an AMS potion on your potm and starfall next to their base with mass chippo and now you are the one thats getting teamed. Undead = DK/Lich/DL. Mobility, crippling potential, crazy nuke, best aoe stun behind a blink dagger tc, nova, nova, death and decay, and nova.
Nearly unbeatable armies exist in my opinion. But only a few and they are situational. Here's what I can think of/have faced/have used or lost to.
orc v ud: 100 food orc army vs undead with BM/TC/SH or DR/TC/SH. Tri caster, kodo, couple tauren, and mass wyverns/bat or zerkers + bat. It is quite literally unbeatable. Some sort of AMS abuse/ infernal drop/ sh sleep/ giant nuke on the dps portion of their army/ flank hit/ 5 hit and run nukes before the actual battle, and you might have 40/60 odds, but only if you out level their heros and have more gold in the bank.
Mass undead air against elf on non tavern maps, especially if they dont have a warden/ lvl6 potm. Very hard to screw this up.
Balanced tank/priest/gryhpon army against an elf that doesn't have the right heros. Elf ground just isn't good enough unless his heros can make up the work. Air will get killed by the tanks if there are enough.
Chippo vs orc can sometimes be unbeatable if the elf has decent gold advantage. Unless the orc can produce enough bats, he can be overrun. Especially with use of heal scrolls/tranquility/scroll of prot, 10 chims just wcreck anything the orc can make, and hippos vs wyvern is a joke.
BUT all this being said, it is remarkable how balanced FFA can be.
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