Satyr Saturday Replays Week 71 and up

[Ricky_Honejasi]

I think TGS always favored at least slightly the orc units if we 100% exclude heroes. If I remember well, the fault was usually bloodlust and/or tauren revival.

Sometimes I wonder if tauren revival should be axed or considerably nerfed (ex : only 25-50% hp revive instead of 100%).

Also remember that tauren also have their aoe random proc (Pulverize) on attack which vs many footies and knights might tip up considerably.

[Mucky]

Here's something I noticed about the spawns:

Alliance Workshop has 1 innate spawn for Mortar Teams and 0 for Siege Engines.
Horde Totem has 1 innate spawn for Taurens and 0 for Demolishers.

I've switched the numbers around for Horde side, so they start with 1 Demolisher instead of a Tauren. Test with this + all upgrades researched + all spawns at level 1, Alliance won in 52 minutes. I didn't test for level 3 spawns, but I suspect Horde would still win, albeit more slowly, as their kodo/troll/spellcaster blob starts snowballing before the first Tauren even spawns.

Last night I was pondering if I should replace Sorceress' Invisibility with something they would actually use. Though I think the above change has evened things up to the point where that is probably not necessary.

[Xenon]

Lv5 and up Owl Scout has Bloodlust, is that affected too?

I think part of what gives Horde an advantage is the healing wards; the only reason they're balanced in melee is because players are smart enough to attack them. AoS waves aren't, and although I tried to get Spell Breakers to steal them, the wards won't be in the best position to be useful to the Alliance wave.

I had considered making them have the Obsidian Statue's heal instead. If priests can't heal heroes, wards probably shouldn't either.

[Mucky]

Lv5 and up Owl Scout has Bloodlust, is that affected too?

Not anymore! I replaced their bloodlust with a custom copy. Same stats as the shaman's, but able to target heroes.

I think part of what gives Horde an advantage is the healing wards; the only reason they're balanced in melee is because players are smart enough to attack them. AoS waves aren't, and although I tried to get Spell Breakers to steal them, the wards won't be in the best position to be useful to the Alliance wave.

Well, I just looked at wards. I don't know if it was one of us who changed it, but it's been at 1% health per second as opposed to the default 2%. That, and even though I improved the Witch Doctor's AI, they are still pretty dumb about using it. They don't put healing wards down until they themselves start taking damage, which -- unless it's from a stray mortar shot -- means they're already dead.

Bloodlust is still the #1 factor in horde snowballs. However, this applies only to my end-game tests where everything is fully upgraded from the start. Alliance arguably has the advantage at the earlier levels. Not my ideal balance, but it's better than what we've had in a while.

I had considered making them have the Obsidian Statue's heal instead. If priests can't heal heroes, wards probably shouldn't either.

Done. This was something I already had in mind, changing army spells to not interact with heroes. I'm still on the fence regarding offensive spells (e.g. slow, dispels, stasis ward) and auras (war drums), though.

FINAL LIST OF CHANGES FOR TGS:

• Flying Machine armor reduced.
• Raiders have their air-only Ensnare + structure-only Demolish.
• Friendly army spells (Heal, Inner Fire, Bloodlust, Healing Ward) do not affect heroes.
• Removed True Sight from Flying Machines.
• Removed the Magic Sentry upgrade for towers.
• Demolisher's armor type has been changed from Heavy to Unarmored.
• Mortar Team's armor type has been changed from Heavy to Unarmored.
• Innate Tauren has been exchanged for an innate Demolisher (to match the Alliance's innate Mortar Team).

STUFF I WOULD LIKE TO DO IN THE FUTURE:

• Refactoring innate hero skills to actually be useful.
• Revivable/upgradable towers.
• A more robust ability manager system capable of tracking which skills are stored in which command button slots and dynamically assigning hotkeys to them. This will likely require multiple copies of each spell in the Object Editor (because you can't actually change an ability's hotkey in JASS). The goal with this is to: 1. Completely eliminate hotkey conflicts, 2. Have all non-innate and non-special hotkeys follow the QWERT standard. This would be a significant undertaking that will require some planning on my part, but I'm fairly confident it can be done.

Feel free to discuss any of the above.

Now to see if I can turn super saiyan and get an entire hero done for CFA in one day.

[IskatuMesk]

I always thought magic sentry was an upgrade you needed to get.

[Mucky]

Well, the only reason you would get it is if someone on Horde got windwalk. So, for a fraction of what a gem would cost, you shut down windwalk builds in all lanes simultaneously. Assuming that's what you meant.

Two spells done for the Dervish. Hopefully I can get one more done before SS. I might just return to my old strategy of throwing Suicide Bombing on unfinished heroes.

[IskatuMesk]

I was just wondering why alliance seemed to start off with it when I remember it being an upgrade (?). Or did everyone always buy it at map start?

[Mucky]

stuff for CFA:

• New spell for Furion
• New spell for Planeteer
• Buffed Planeteer's Fire Shield and Dwarven Interloper's Scattershot
• MLG no longer disables tooltips

me after working on these new spells

[IskatuMesk]

awwwyis

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Mostly added replays at Q's request. Mostly for the TGS game.

[Mucky]

CFA:

• Refactored hotkeys for Keeper of the Small and Planeteer to QWERT standard.
• Earth Elementals has been replaced with a new skill: Earth Wall.
• Fire Shield now has a 1 (down from 5) second cooldown and a 45 (up from 20) second duration. It can no longer be stacked.
• Scattershot now has a cooldown of 6/5/4/3/2 seconds (previously 5), has a range of 500/550/600/650/700 (previously 450), costs 50/60/70/80/90 mana, fires 12 (up from 8) pellets, and has a wider spread.
• Wild Axes now has a cooldown of 6 (down from 9) seconds and costs 60/75/90/105/120 (down from 90/110/130/150/170) mana.
• Phalanx's damage has been reduced by half.
• Innervate has been replaced with a new skill: Lore of Nature.
• Backdoor is now a regular skill again.
• Force of Nature now has a 25 (down from 40) second cooldown.
• Faerie Fire now has a 1 (down from 12) second cooldown.
• Wrath of Nature now has a 25 (down from 45) second cooldown and infinite bounce range (it still has a cast range of 900).
• Meteor's damage has been reduced by half.
• Charge's damage has been reduced by half and its knockback distance has been marginally reduced.
• Torrasque's base armor reduced to 0.
• MR BIG now only summons one clone at a time (no joke, that shit was making my computer hang up during tests).
• DOOM LORD KAZZAK is now dangerous.
• The Dervish has returned. He is begrudgingly still unfinished, so he gets suicide bombing as an ultimate. I had a concept for him, then realized I couldn't implement everything without first having a knockback system with actual Z-axis. For now, play this hero at your peril.
• Took a shit on a cliff.
• MLG rune no longer disables tooltips.

PSA:

• Color triggers now account for players changing their color in the lobby.
• Shockwaves are now tinted to have the color of the player. Note there are some bits of the shockwave model that remain yellow regardless of tinting. I'd like to fix that, but it would require editing the model itself, which I don't know how to do.
• Attempted to implement shockwaves canceling each other out. As it turns out, the Locust ability (used to make dummy units unselectable and untargetable) breaks the GroupEnumUnitsInRange native, thus requiring horrific backdoor methods to work. The code I have works, but the performance completely dies with merely 20 shockwaves, so I have it commented out. Pain in my fucking ass.

[IskatuMesk]

Do you want hero concepts?

[Mucky]

So long as nothing utilizes the dragon turtle model, I'm down for anything.

[IskatuMesk]

How possible do you think skillshots/multi target skillshots with dynamic cost would work? Say you have a dynamic firewall, you push spell button, click 3 points or whatnot, and it dynamically creates fire and cost based on the size of the tracing?

[Xenon]

I'm thinking a "Buttdozer" that's kind of an equivalent to the Torrasque. Melee, Siege Engine model. Has a basic ability like Charge, but has a lower cooldown, and instead of knocking back, units get stuck to the front of it (they can still attack and use abilities). When it crashes through trees the stuck units take damage. If it stops moving, the charge ends, or it turns too sharply, the units fly off for damage on impact.