If you want to win, I am forming a team. Now the type of people I am looking for are the upper echelon of FFA players who are also capable solo players—talking 180-250+ apm players with micro in early game and late game situations, who are capable of adapting when shit hits the fan. Preferred strong experience with at least 2 races.
I have experience in solo, FFA, & a ton in both 4's RT and 4's AT. Here are my last 3 accounts doing 4v4 RT during Christmas break.
(click to show/hide)
If winning the tournament sounds like something you are interested in and would be dedicated in trying to do, and you are one of the type of players I outlined, then let me know. Because of the prize pool, there will probably be at least a strong team or 2, probably from Europe, comprised of solo players who are better than any of you at the game—this is why I need some big (FFA) names if we are going to beat them, who understand late game and early game situations alike, and are willing to cheese the hell out of people if needed. If the right team is formed and the desire is there, winning will be the only option.
-TC is a top 6-7 hero, definitely not #1. -Stampede and Volcano are good abilities. -The Demon Hunter is much more of an early game hero than he is a late game hero. -People who make dryad + hippogryph armies are the FFA equivalents of sjw gluten-free feminazis. -There is a disappointingly low hard cap to how skilled you can be in organized FFA. -Crypt Lord is worse than the Fire Lord, Beast Master, and Pit Lord in non-random hero games. He is the worst hero in the game. -Orc isn't stronger than Night Elf.
And I know I said this in my last thread, but: -Hippogryphs suck. Night Elves should try making literally almost pure chim armies more, whether to surprise people or against Orc/Human and let their heroes kill the air.
(8)Sanctuary LV -Swapped the 4 Mercenary camps with Goblin Laboratories -Swapped the 2 center Gold Mines with Mercenary Camps -Added a second Tavern to the center of the map -Added 2 green creep camps to the center of the map -Added a red creep camp to the center of the map -No more all Golem creep camps -Lowered the previous 2 center red creep camps to orange creep camps -Replaced most Lordaeron creep camp units with Cityscape creep units
While you chat-obsessed, talk-first fight-never FML players tried your best to constantly ruin this map with extremely long games, it still remained the greatest map of all time on a chaotic ladder game. RIP
We often focus on unimportant things much too frequently, like politics and season finals, resulting in us ignoring the important questions like which blade master name is best or which hero looks best under what aura.
Now I understand there are multiple schools of thought, however, many combinations are hard to deny.
After careful study and close inspection, I've discovered a few points. 1. Heroes with small collision size often are excellent candidates 2. There are definitely exceptions to the aforementioned rule 3. Some heroes only look good after "aura stacking". Aura stacking involves putting multiple auras on a single hero in order to make that hero look better. As a secondary benefit, you also get the effects the auras provide. 4. Aura strength doesn't always correspond to what aura looks best, but chat can always be used as a tool to offset this.
I assert that these are among the best:
God Tier: Warden + Legion Doom Horn: Easily the best looking in the entire game, no challenge. This really brings out the Warden's dark side that we don't get to visually see.
Top Tier: Dread Lord + Command Aura: Makes the DL and the army he commands quite intimidating, especially at high level with dual aura. Mountain King + Ancient Janggo of Endurance: Solidifies the the MK as true king under the Mountain. Can be swapped with Scourge Bone Chimes if going for Dark Iron Dwarf effect. Tauren Chieftan + Alleria's Flute of Accuracy: This makes the TC look more like a good paladin that fights for the light. Priestess of the Moon + 3 aura items: Usually you put command + unholy + endurance on her, combined with her native aura. This makes her quite scary, often hidden under the shade of many chimeras.
Other good ones: Dark Ranger + Legion Doom Horn Lich + Kadgar's Pipe of Insight Blade Master + Janggo of Endurance (rarely seen phenomenon)
I've spent ~40-50 hours the last few weeks trying to learn Orc. This is just a monologue of some statistics of my games and things I learned—coming from a Night Elf main, and Human/Undead secondary.
Here's the account I took slightly serious, keep in mind I played quite a few more games scattered around accounts and a ton on my main random accounts a couple months ago. Posting this now because I don't know how much more I'll play of it at the moment, I realize its not too many games. http://ffarena.lunaghost.com/?u=dralchsh
This account in particular is something like this: 1) 5-5 is using DR/TC/SH or DR/Alch/SH. 2) 4-2 Random Hero 3) 15-3 Blade/SH/TC
Of those 3 different hero combos/modes, here are my thoughts
1) DR combos felt very "sit and kick" combos. I.e. I'm not strong enough to win a fight without a huge army, so I'm just gonna chill in my base till I get strong enough. It felt very reactive as opposed to proactive, or luck based on whether I could safely mine enough gold. It also felt much clumsier as it gravitated my army composition to ground more often than I would have liked and left me, while strong in combat, less mobile.
2) Orc seems pretty strong in Random Heroes, having a good MU against Human and Undead, and goes even against Elf if you have a good bank and good scouting, and extremely disadvantaged if you don't. Every hero seems to synergize well with spirit link + blood lust + heal ward, save maybe the tinker. I dominated a game with multiple solos and teaming on Polska with FS/CL/FL, the combo felt strong rather than weak.
3) Blade Master combos seemed the most powerful in every imaginable way. The damage, mobility, purge, and blade storm carried most my wins.
And here is a giant list of random stuff:
-When using the Blade Master, I always went SH 2nd, and rushed level 3 asap.
-I learned you can stack the blade anytime on any map. Sometimes you just have to settle for 4 circlets, orb, invul, and Kodo + Bloodlust + Endurance, and whatever tomes you picked up. I was prioritizing this over units at times, and to say it didn't win me multiple games would be a lie. Blade Master dps and blade storm + stomp won me many games.
-Multiple games I had to harass workers while in a weak position just to get blade storm to be able to comeback with stomp + storm.
-I prioritized blade levels unless it would give me an odd level on TC/SH.
-TC I prioritized circlets and SH I prioritized Periapts.
-My Blade Master and SH never used boots in a single game, while my TC used them every game.
-I straight Wyvern teched every single Blade first and Random hero game, zero grunts, hh, or mercs.
-During tech I built 0-3 towers, and almost always bought 2 circlets even with Random Heroes. On maps like Sanctuary, if I spawned next to a Human or Undead I would build 3 towers before starting my tech due to paranoia.
-Most if not all my losses came from a poor performance or bad luck during the minutes 10 through 20.
-I think I only lost one game after the 30 minute mark, and it was my fault for poor performance against Elf and I probably a bad 10-20 minute period.
-I was angrier while playing Orc than any other race, and felt cheated all the time. Everything felt like other people’s fault and I was a true sociopath on more than one occasion. It’s hard to relax in a losing game when the race makes you feel like you deserve to win no matter what.
-I delayed my casters probably a little longer than most Orcs, feeling 65 food of Wyvern + Spirit Link + a few towers was more than enough to accomplish what I needed.
-I gladly creep-jacked people, stealing items and killing hero’s early game against random people without discrimination.
-Elf was always by far the hardest match up, but I definitely still felt advantaged assuming I had 100 food and enough money to lose 30-40 food and go again. This was the most punishing MU for me and I need to make more bats and be better with gold.
-I never felt like I needed gold to beat Undead and Human players. Just enough gold for 1.5 armies was always enough.
-I was super aggressive with my hexes before fights started to shut out a key enemy hero. This is why Elf might have been the hardest because they have 3 key heroes. 1 that takes mana, 1 that kills army, 1 that stops my hit and run. Which to hex? Usually the DH then stomp both Panda and DH was the best.
-Any item that wasn't circlet/periapt/tp on my SH/TC felt like a burden because they didn't help my cause and prevented me from buying scrolls, which I felt were more important. The exception was high level, spirit linked TC who will never die anyway.
-Observer Ward feels almost as broken as stomp.
-I felt with Bloodlust any extra move speed was overrated, but TC aura was still great anyway, legion doom horn not necessary. Only command/brilliance and maybe trueshot/legion I would keep.
-Silence is strong against Orc, but really only if used from Elf. I fought ~10 DR/TC/SH users and they were always a pushover with my higher heroes and greater damage, which I should have, mind you, using a stronger early game hero.
-I built tauren totems in only maybe a third of my games, even against Orc. I was so stubborn about this, but I think it was often a good decision to not invest the 600 lumber into tauren for the first 35 minutes of a game, especially on shredderless map. I am a polarizing player and I don’t like to play fair, even though Orc has a nice balanced army.
-My upgraded Kodo was more for my Blade Master than anything else, however I usually only used one over 80 food or late game with low worker count.
-Wyverns + higher level heroes still won against Tauren Caster Bat HH if I scrolled well with spirit link and utilized good stomps + disenchants + blade storms or BBVoodoo.
-In at least a third of my games I waited till tier 3 to expand. I did this because I felt like I only needed to have access to 1.5 armies to win any game and hero levels were the most important. I could insta-tower expand later and build an army. Defending with high level heroes, spirit link, some towers, and wyverns is a breeze. No one can kill a level 4-5 blade master with 4 circlets, spirit link, and level 2 heal wave support at that point in the game.
-Whereas with Human and Night Elf gold is a necessary evil, with Orc it felt like an after-thought, an unneeded luxury. Losing too many units when you have 70% faster move speed than the enemy, spirit link, healward, stomp, BBVoodoo, and healwave, is a bad habit.
-I didn't use Ancestral Spirit once (I forgot it existed)
-The Demon Hunters weaknesses tend to drive me crazy, i.e. he is the best hero in the game at standing still, and that’s about it. Tanking, Autoattack, etc. The Blade Master was so refreshing to use because he did double the Damage of the Demon Hunter, had triple the mobility, and had spirit link making him just as tanky, and stomp hex to allow him to actually kill things, not to mention being able to purge anything he hits to guarantee a kill. The Demon Hunter has none of these things.
-If Blade was MVP the most, SH was MVP the second most and TC MVP the least, which is the opposite order I would have expected. I think stacking the BM makes the SH more valuable and thus this is why.
So here we have Northshire. I feel like there are 3 choices I have when the game starts: -Blade + Grunt + quick expo -Blade + Merc + slightly slower quick expo -Blade + Item Hunt + late expo
It feels like a crime to not immediately take your expo here but I always chose the 3rd option. Say I spawned at the X, then I will go to 1, 2 in that order, then both 4 and 3. 1 and 2 drop a level 2 item (circlet, ring +2, glove, claw +6), and the wizard at 3 and 4 drop a level 2 tome. So say I get a circlet and a ring +2 from the greens, then I get a tome +2 str and a tome of knowledge from the wizards. And I sell the ring and get my circlets. Now I have a level 2/3 blade with +11 str, + 9 agi, + 9 int, making me like a level 7 blade master before tier 2, and a level 10 blade master by tier 3. There are different advantages to having a level 7 blade master during tech versus having 1250 gold 2 minutes earlier.
I just want to reiterate my biggest issue with playing Orc, and that is the humungous variance that can occur during minutes 10 through 20. I am a glass cannon at this point in the game, and losing a single battle or getting slightly teamed or getting an expo killed can set everything back so far and cause a loss more so than Elf or Human. There are 6 caster upgrades, and I have to get them out quickly, and decide which order to get them, and set aside A TON of lumber for this, with the slowest lumber harvesting race (to be fair I don't need final walker upgrade for a while). During this I need to get at least 2-2 or 2-1 on my Wyverns WITH envenomed spears. My SH needs at least one periapt, my TC needs boots, my Blade needs orb. I need at least 3-4 towers if a good Elf or Undead is going to push me because I will literally be throwing the game if I waste all my early game gold on bats to defend. I need 200 lumber burrow/tower upgrade. I also need at least one expansion to have been mining for a while with prospects of getting a 3rd mine sometime soon. Literally all these things need to occur to secure a game, and when they do, it's a total breeze. When they don't, this race is suuuuuuuuper annoying to play. Getting teamed early hurts so bad. Getting expos harassed, bats blown up on you, having your TP hero slept while gargs kill your wyverns with Frost Nova support, making a single mistake, etc. etc. can just screw this race over so hard.
However, it's like the exact opposite of Undead, as you are SO strong once game reaches late game. If you make it through that tunnel of death, or just get lucky, or you play on point, then you are a literally GOD in the later game. And this "late game" can start as early as minute 15 on shredder maps, which is INSANE. I've had multiple sub 18 or 25 minute games if my early game went right. You put everyone on a clock and guess what, there is no answer to hexabloodluststomp BLADEFOCUSMYHEROESAREHIGHERTHANYOURS.
Also one last thing I paid a lot of attention to was my base build, and how strong it was early game, mid game, and late game. Some rules I generally had were having at least 2 beastiaries safely in the back for bats, protected Altar, having an open base, and having 2 sets of towers, the first clumped and the 2nd set randomly spread out. This is because close together is good against Orc and Undead (as long as its not too many for Death and Decay value), and spread out is better against Elf and Human. 2 sets could only mean 5 towers, but I felt like at least 5 was necessary in case of teaming or scouting fail, things that happen to me every game.
Anyways. I am no expert with Orc. I already knew a lot about this race but these are just a lot of things that I figured out myself that I thought might help some of you if you are interested. I am better now at Orc mechanically and believe they are a very strong race. It bothers me when I can get a better record with an off race than with my original mains of Elf/Undead, but hey, what can you do.
Feel free to share your unpopular opinions, assuming you actually have any (you should). Keep it to FFA strategy and don't name any players.
Here are some of mine: -Boots are overrated. I think the gold is often better spent elsewhere both early game and super late game, which is when they are best. Auraless, Avg MS heroes obviously need them tho.
-Dark Ranger is the single most overrated hero in FFA, and is only optimal against Orc, who have 30%+ movespeed and bloodlust to run away anyway, and in a small percentage of stalemates. She is good, mind you, but hugely overrated.
-Mass TP is underrated. Its already looked at as one of if not the powerful thing in FFA, but I think even the best humans use this to 25-35% of its potential.
-Ground is bad, save for a few specific cases. Ground is too fair, and if you are playing fair you are playing wrong.
-Balanced armies are often bad, see "Ground is bad"
-Hippogryphs are often terrible units. They literally do next to nothing in so many cases and are probably the single most overproduced unit in FFA.
-Tinker doesn't need to be played as a laming hero.
-Towers aren't lame at all, and if you have problems beating people who tower that is your fault for playing/being bad/using Undead. They are necessary as human and orc against competent Elves and Undeads early game, or to buy an extra 3-5 minutes to get an army.
-Undead is even worse than people think and the fact that good Undeads win is because: 1. Manipulation/teaming. 2. Massive early game lead. 3. The Undead is a much better player 4. The matchup is being played wrong by the non-undead. The FFA community is filled with what I call "Undead-enablers". i.e. people playing bad and losing because they don't understand how weak Undead actually is and how to manipulate it. However, before the 25-30 minute mark, Undead is beyond glorious.
These are just some opinions of mine. If you disagree, congratulations, you get the point of the thread. What are some of yours? Or you can discuss some points of mine/others.
I go over when/why you'd use the tinker in Elf, his matchups with Elf, Ud, Orc, HU, and using him both passively and aggressively (hoarder or rush-mode). I go into cluster rockets for a while too vs the HU match up.
If you want to just hear more late-game stuff, watch after 25 minutes, sometime soon after that I will go over each MU in detail for the tinker.
I'm making a series of videos where I go over FFA strategy. The quality is nice (1080p/60fps), and my commentary will get better as time goes on. It's very hard to commentate while I play, so this is probably the best way I can do it.
This is aimed at anyone really, experienced and inexperienced players alike. I don't really go into detail about micro tips or specific early-game build orders, but instead broad ideas, questions, advantages/disadvantages, map positioning, different types of counters, probably some unique insight (I generally don't play too standard) and things like that. I will be making more.
Too much playing, too little talking. Need more talk to balance things out. Come here and talk about FFA, whatever is on your mind!
Had more or less a 1.5 year on-and-off break from FFA. I played/watched solo games for about 3 months before going back into FFA this time, and learned enough things to change my opinions again. I've played ~50 games before season and ~30 games during season so far.
anyways, some thoughts: -Strategies that give you a really good early game just seem best, even at the cost of late game strength (to a degree). I will rush people out a lot earlier now, or even annoyingly creep jack them if I sense weakness. Run at them with early triple orb, archer dryad hipporider bears-->Chippo for the early extra mines, mass foots + mercs and tower rush someone, whatever works. I've mostly been playing random, and this seems to apply for every race. Reminds me of the less-than-good Beastmaster strategy/guide that I did. Probably isn't that bad if you can kill 3 people within 18 minutes...everyone else is put on a short clock. DH/BM/AM/DK are almost required with this mindset, with only Elf and to a small degree human having a little flexibility, but AM is best (x1000000 AM best).
-100 food army battles being a signature of FFA is a fallacy. This is a fair battle...and that is bad. What wins games is not just running 100 food armies into 100 food armies, but taking unfair battles. This is obvious, I know, but the difference I feel from being so much more aggressive is everything is an unfair battle. I'm hitting people just a little too early with heroes a little too high, and taking a little too many mines.
-"Favorable Trades" This is something grubby says a lot while streaming, such as how blade / dh get very good trades due to high dps/armor. Well, at least for Elf, the best way you get good trades is having tranquility and lots of staffs. I tried Kotg first quite a few times and really liked it. He is strong early game, cause no one wants to lose units, and early tranquility is just nuts when fighting under-upgraded units. (would be kotg panda potm here)
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