Beast Master FFA Guide as Elf

[Dovekie]

Posted this on WCR last night.


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.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BytJUi17vhwsVUo3MVgzWVdrV28&usp=sharing

Fixed all replay links (just get them through this google drive), and added lilke 10 replays.

[FML|Mage]

Feel free to copy and paste the entire thing here if you want, you'll probably get a lot of feedback from FML on these forums, but they'd be too lazy to go to WCR.  I'll read it later for sure!

And let me know if you have any trouble with formatting.  I love having new guides popping up though.

[SteppinRazor]

I really like the idea of using beastmaster/panda/potm.  Double scout from owl + hawk would basically be MH.  Beastmaster probably isn't the best combat hero late game, but having so much scouting ability would help make up for that.  Plus, his ultimate + lv 3 BOF + starfall + chims would wreck some bases pretty fast. 

[Dovekie]

Sounds good to me. Though part of the strength is being able to finish the game earlier with higher heros, and you lose that when you get 3, but it's probably better in the end. Also the potms scout owl is mh enough, you don't even need hawk to scout if your using that.

But you are right, 3 heros are obviously better than 2, but sometimes it's nicer to have 10/7 instead of 8/5/4. I've been using the former and I like it.

[vain_endeavour]

cannot download the replays :(

[Dovekie]

I'll upload them to another site later, I don't know whats up with them.  Here are the more recent ones I played.  I star'd the ones I think are more interesting/better.


http://tft.replayers.com/index.php?action=view&id=27918
*Replay #8: This is using a FL second instead, who actually works well with this strat, especially if you give him 2 crown of kings worth of circlets.

http://tft.replayers.com/index.php?action=view&id=28032
*Replay #9: Played on one of the new maps.  Beast helped me take out a night elf pretty early just as he was getting his chims out, then another elf later.  Came to 1v1 against a human.  Features some cool showing of the beast defending while down 40 food against the human and something similar against the elf.

http://tft.replayers.com/index.php?action=view&id=28028
Replay #10: Beast against elf, then ud, then hipporider elf that was decent.  Good part with 3 80 food battles all with ~10 seconds in between.

http://tft.replayers.com/index.php?action=view&id=28033
Replay #11: Long mirror against an elf that I eventually take out by massing mountain giants and using my summons as dps.  Undead on the other side that I thought was fighting someone else was actually just exposing 8 times and he kills me because I had way too much food in my mountain giants instead of chippo.  Think I would have won if I had stopped making so much MJ’s.

http://tft.replayers.com/index.php?action=view&id=28030
Replay #12: Another one on spider falls. I like this map because if you kill someone early enough, you get access to 4 mines, and you can defend all 4 mines with 2 small chokes.  Well that didn’t work out this game but it was still fun.  Used the Firelord again second and had some roared mass summon, chippo, and stampede/volcano going at the same time.  Think I like mass air with this cause chippo is a very big handful for someone to handle, that they don’t worry so much about the summons.

http://tft.replayers.com/index.php?action=view&id=28031
*Replays #13: One of those games where everything goes wrong at the start.  Get hit while creeping and you fight for some reason/ lose most your units and somehow your hero. Lose expo just before you get any wisps in it. Drop an item to heal and for some reason you don’t pick it up and an enemy takes it.  Well this was one of those games.  Turned into a really fun game actually.  Was able to beat orc ground with hippo riders by forcing him to tp and immediately AMS ult’ing backwards to eat his ground up with explosive lizards. Used a firelord, who is very strong at level 9 with +5 ring, blink dagger, and mass circlets.  On market square vs mainly and orc and an ud.

[Seksi]

Nice write up.  It was interesting and I enjoyed reading it.  Thanks for sharing.

 

[Slythe]

Beastmaster can be an alternative option as first hero for sure. I do think that he is maybe best against human.

replay #8 was a nice one ! constant action, quite close etc. i saw another on spiderfalls but almost every other was a broken link.

[Ugri2]

yesterday dovekie played warden panda potm, what happened?

[Dovekie]

Didn't want to get maga with no early AoE but I honestly would have been better off if I did use beast.

Yeah will replayers only let me have 4 replays up at once? 

Okay fixed all replays in my first post and will try and get the other ones up.

[FireDragon]

Usually guides are written by seasoned players, and usually they have played for many years and held rank 1 for periods of time. Your guide is actually pretty good for a fairly new player. But there are holes. Do you calculate the exp gain from tier 2 & 3 tech? Also you are merely doing nothing more than what we would call 1-2 hero 80 food push. Your entire guide could be read by most of us by simply writing:

:Fast 80 push with Beastmaster!"

Anyways, I wish you luck if you play vs 1 other actual FFA player.  VS 2 FFA players it would be a suicidal strategy. You battle one of them and it takes you extra time since they see you coming and counter you a bit. So you kill 1 while the other watches, then when he is ready, he pumps 100 food army and wipes you out. An actual FFA player knows what is going on all over the map and reacts to their best situation.

To me, a beastmaster is just a nuke target, but if you find it fun to play then play on brothaaaa!

[Dovekie]

Im definitely a seasoned solo player who has been at the top of ladder multiple times, and though I've always sort of followed general ffa strategies over the years and played a few games here and there, I'm relatively new... That is until recently.

I would not (probably..) use this in a 4-way against all good players, this guide is more directed to the 6-8+man FFAs that the bot hosts, or something that we'd play in koffa (which I probably should have specified).

I've been making it a point to see if the rush works against good players and it really works against anyone but undead. Though cross-mapping, something stupid usually happens, like getting intercepted or someone hits my main.  It's best against night elf, who you have a large window to rush. Orc needs to be sooner and human a little later. The ability of the actual player I'm hitting hasn't been an issue. The main differnce is "actual ffa players" die slower and they whine A LOT more and scream at other players to hit me, which I guess is fair and all but kind of annoying.

Thanks for your feed back.

And of all things to nuke why would it be the STR hero that out levels your first hero by 4 levels?  Maybe it's embedded into your mind that whenever you see a Beast Master, its probably from some noob and that you can get some extra XP off him with a couple nukes. Lol.  I'm laughing cause I do the same thing.

I'm sure my beast master is a bit tougher :)


About the extra XP gain from tier 2 and 3, I thought the numbers would be kind of boring for everyone but yeah, I thought a lot about it, and it was my motivation for thinking up some specific strategies while laying down bored on my fiances floor while she cleaned her room. Ill post some comparisons of 3 hero vs 1 tier 3 hero and it might be surprising for some people how ridiculously easy it is to get level 9-10 very quickly.

[Jey_s_TeArS]

Th000 going BM first

[Dovekie]

Yeah occasionally elves will use beast against human and they are often wins!  You gotta love the beast master.

Okay I fixed all the links (use the google drive in my first post) and added like 10 more replays.

Replay #14
Kind of just conquered my side of the map with ease, made a 130 food army of chippo + summons, killed lightweight through non verbal opportunism teaming, and then just stampeded/volcanoed the last elves base + ground army.

Replay #15
Level 10 Beastmaster + level 10 Firelord.  Fire Lord is actually a very nice hero to have once you get him past level 8  . This game features multiple dual AMS volcano + stampede action versus ground armies.

*Replay #16
Nice game with a lot of fighting against a hit running undead, who I ultimately kill when he has 3 high level heroes and mass fiendshee, with a beast master, fire lord, low level potm, and a mountain giant, a dryad and 2 hippo riders.  The rest of my army was normal hippogryphs against no air.

*Replay #17
3 way against maga and another undead.  Teamed out maga after he played hit and run with both of us for 20 minutes and we got annoyed, then it came down to a big 100 food battle. 130 food army of mass hippo/hipporider/dott/bear hawk/bear/quill/lavaspawn and howl vs 100 food of gargs. Pretty much unbeatable. Also shows that I get a free frostwyrm/destroyer or garg kill everytime maga hit and ran me because of hipporider + quill + dryad.

Replay #18
On monsoon. Started creeping big red creeps at like 6 minutes into game, with archers quills and purge gnoll. Got creep jacked, then all of a sudden the warden shows up out of my Alter, probably looking for illidan or something and I tell her to go back home but she didn't.  Just chippo'd everyone to death with Beast master and warden, and summons.

Replay #19
Chippo-dott-rider'd everyone with summons and stampedes and eventually double starfalls.

Replay #20
This game gave me an idea. It would be fun to run around  with an invis potion on the BM and the POTM and through scouting, find when two people are gonna fight and then stick yourself to the side of the fight and double AMS starfall both of them.

*Replay #21
A good example of how to play this strategy and how to play this map. It works really well on spider falls because of the chokes.  Funny moment when an orc TP's while I am double starfalling him with some chims, and he loses ~35 food in the 3 seconds it takes for his tp to go.  Towering certain expos is good even for elf.

*Replay #22
BM + POTM with nice mixed army all game of dryads dotts mountain giants and chims against a human and a couple orcs. This map is good for this strat as you can get auras at the marketplaces and mana for your beast and spell shields.  Was a GG.

[E.AUDITOREDC]

Interesante el uso de los heroes como el panda un muy buen heroe a mi criterio, gracias por mostrarme seguire pendiente y asi mejorar mas muchas gracias