Spellcasters

Whole lotta castin’ going on

Pre 1.10, few players bothered making non-hero spell casters. One of the primary reasons for this is that there were too many buildings to make in order to gain the tech necessary to make them effective. Using the same money, it was just more cost effective to make more regular fighting troops. In response, Blizzard has removed a lot of extraneous structures to streamline the building tech-tree. The Night Elf Bear Den has been removed – Druid of the Claw is now made in the Ancient of Lore with the Dryad, and the Druid of the Talon (newly inserted in the game) is made in the Ancient of Wind with the Hippogryph. Their respective upgrades are in those structures as well. On the Human side, the Mage Tower is out, with both Priests/Sorceresses and their upgrades all made from the Arcane Sanctum now. Other non-spell caster buildings, like the Gargoyle Spire and Orc Forge have also been removed to streamline town building.

GG indeed

You can send resources to your ally on this screen

At first, the changes to encourage the making of spell casters may have been a little too good, as several races developed all-spell caster rushes. With many of their attacks also buffed up, they were serviceable as standalone troops when buffed by their own spells. The all-Sorceress rush of the Humans was fairly devastating. Slow is auto cast and very cheap in terms of mana. No amount of dispelling could keep up with a band of auto-casting Sorcs. Combine that with their Polymorph spell and the Sorcs were force all their own. Blizzard responded in 1.11 by nerfing Sorc attack damage, increasing their build time and cost, and having Slow affect attack speed in a slightly less dramatic fashion. Another popular rush was the Orc Shaman rush – with Lightning Shield and Bloodlust, several Shamans could tear up a lot of armies by themselves. Again, 1.11 increased cost and build time, so now Shamans are back to being a support unit, not a be-all, end-all.

Necro Cheese

Perhaps the most popular all-spellcaster cheese was the Necromancer swarm. With their autocast Raise Skeleton, combined with building several Graveyards (Graveyards pump out corpses regularly), a band of Necromancers could raise an army of dozens of skeletons, and constantly refresh them. While one player in a team game doing this can be overcome, a triple Undead team doing this in a 3on3 gets to be quite annoying. With hundreds skeletons in front of them, it’s difficult to use your troops to get at the Necros. By the time you could get a decent force of air units going, the Undead guy would have Banshees to simply possess them, so there was really no counter to this strategy. In response, Blizzard has reduced the skeleton duration time to 20 seconds, unless an upgrade is researched which makes their duration 40 seconds. Banshees can no longer possess air units now either.

So much for that expansion

Meanwhile, Kenn attacks the other expansion

The case of the missing spells and units

Pre-1.10, the Night Elves had a few missing spells (on the Druid of the Claw) and a missing unit (the Druid of the Talon). These have now been added. The Druid of the Claw’s spells are quite effective – Roar, and Rejuvenation. Roar gives all units around the Druid of the Claw a 25% bonus to their attack – as you can imagine it’s extremely effective. Rejuvenation heals a targeted unit over a short period of time. The catch is that these spells can only be cast when the druid is in Man form. They pop out of the building in Bear form, with no mana, so you need to turn him into a man and then up his mana from the Moon Wells in your town to make him an effective spell caster right away.

The Druid of the Talon comes out of the building in man form, and he has some interesting spells. Faerie Fire is autocast and takes away five points of armor from any targeted enemy and prevents them from going invisible. I must confess I’ve never used it, nor seen it used in battle, so I can’t comment on its effectiveness. His Cyclone spell is fairly interesting – it throws any targeted unit up into the air for five seconds, rendering it useless. When the unit lands, it is slowed for another five seconds. One opponent used this spell to great effect on my heroes, tossing them up in the air to interrupt their spell casting. It was quite annoying but I’ve never seen it used after that one game. The final ability of the Druid of the Talon is that he can turn into a Raven form, allowing it to fly and scout around.