Dinker's wishlist for 1.30

Reign of Chaos haven't seen a patch for decades. A patch that would change the flaws that game picked up with times, exploits that players started using to gain advantage with ease.


For the past decade (love this word) there have been inter community talks, sometimes even promises from Blizzard representatives, saying that they will eventually take a look at the old game and make it a bit better. None of this happened, often leaving our small, but still very compact community disappointed. Again.

Now when there is a word that Blizzard is releasing patch 1.30 that will make drastic changes to The Frozen Throne some of us dare to believe that some changes will be made to Reign of Chaos as well. Even myself was dare enough to create a wishlist. I will separate the list of wishes into parts for easier reading and understanding.

Dinker's wishlist:

1st Wish - New map pool

Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos was released in 2002 with 8 solo maps. Its 2018 and these maps are the same. Some minor changes were done to some of these maps in the past such as Plunder Isle where dragon spots were remade (the great dragon was removed and replaced with lvl 5 one). This was done because back in the days Undead players who would go fiends would get 3 levels from each of these spots and they were the only one able to creep it. What this created is that Night elves and Orcs became dominant races on this map which became unplayable for Undead. And who cares how those Human players feel, right? Along with the patch in which Plunder Isle was changed, Scorched Basin was changed as well, instead of having flying Harpies now we have 1 small centaur and 2 ranged centaurs in the middle goldmines. Again, this was done to slow down Undead who would use web and fiends to creep these spots with ease. Once these spots were removed, Night elf gained dominance again.

Changing the map pool is easy. Well, if you have the maps. Hard part is picking up right maps. In past, many parts of our community tried editing maps but these edits weren't done objectively, they were more done in a way "I hate this, I like this". This is not how you create balanced enviroement for everyone. Takes alot of time and experience to create a perfect or close to perfect battlefield.

Somewhere around 2011 I started working on a map project called Rocstars. It took me, Cuborg and LoveStruck around 300 days to finish 10 maps. On these maps I've played against great players of past and present and we could tell the difference. It was better. Link to the maps is HERE

Personally, I'd like to see a map pool of at least 10 maps where players would be able to veto 50% of the maps. Why 50%? Well imagine two players meeting on a b c d e maps because they are both thumbing down other 5. Eventually player that loses more on abcde starts rearranging his map pool. 

2nd Wish - Bring back the spirit of ROC

Now what is the spirit of ROC? Back in the days Mountain king was able to throw his hammer into opponents buildings, you could get mines (3 land mines) as an item on your natural expansion. You could get item called Antimagic shield (purple one) and also buy it from the shop, you could lift your Ancient of War and its armor would remain fortified, you could buy and also get scroll of mana and believe it or not, you could get scroll of mass teleportation if you were lucky enough to kill the islands on Lost Temple.

Sometimes, a step back is 2 steps ahead. It is unrealistic expectation that all these stuff can be implemented but some of these things deserve their place in 1.30. I'd personally like to see a chaotic patch with numerous implementations so Blizzard would be forced to create another one to fix it, then another to fix it better and so on.

3rd Wish - Armor changes

4 Archers, no matter how well they are positioned, cannot kill one upgraded Knight. He is faster, he costs two base upgrades, he is hard to get. He shouldn't be easy to kill. Against a Whyrm he should be food but against 3 Archers he should swing his sword and they should die or run away.

When Blizzard introduced The Frozen Throne they left ROC in the dark. With the help of current map pool (current lol, everlasting better) certain races are dominating for years because they are able to deploy certain playstyles. The most effective playstyles.

Changing armors would force collective conscience to shift for better.

4th Wish - Cosmetics

Whenever I hear someone wants to change Demon Hunters mana burn from 50 to 45 I feel sad in side. Or change Gargoyles to take 3 food instead of 2. These are not issues. These issues are easily fixed by fixing bigger issues. Core issues. Those are map pool, awoken spirit of ROC that separates it from The Frozen Throne and Armor Changes that were left like this with only intention to kill the game. Cosmetics can be changed from time to time, but they are not the most important.

However, there are some cosmetics that should be looked over. These are :

Human

- more speed, more damage and less hp for water elementals

- reduce area effect of Brilliance aura

- Cooldown on priest dispel

- Decrease distance to cast Invisibility with Sorc

- More mana required for Slow spell

- Change tanks armor, make them much less effective against buildings, but awake the spirit of ROC by enabling Human units to load in a tank

- Reduce the effect of upgrade masonry

- Increase Paladin mana cost for Holy light, improve his devotion aura

Orc

- Pillage should work for any Orc unit 

- Less mana required for Shaman's purge, Doc's healing ward

- Kodo beast should have his abilities upgrade in War mill, increased movement speed and ability to load headhunter or grunt onto it.

- Remake Blademaster, illusion spell is useless.

- Far seer reveal spell should cost 20 mana

Undead

- Reduce Lich mana gain per level by 20%

- Add 1 armor to fiends on game start

- Make casters faster 

- Increase coil cooldown by 10%

- DK ulti should revive dead units

- Reduce Wyrm food from 7 to 6

- Abomination should have its own spell, something like plague, not the passive one

Night Elf

- Reduce Demon Hunter Armor

- Change Metamorphosis attack type, or the splash it creates

- Increase armor of KOTG

- Lower Archer HP

- Increase Huntress DMG

- Uprooted Ancients should have better armor

- Dryad should be esnared, consumed and digested by Kodo and should cost more lumber

Well, this is written fast. And you can always talk about cosmetics. Core Parts are my true wishes.