Heroes

Hero Management

One of the biggest additions to WarCraft III is the introduction of hero characters to multiplayer combat. Each race has a selection of three unique heroes, each of whom have their own special spells or auras, one ultimate ability, and different attributes. Some heroes have excellent speed, coupled with a powerful ranged attack, like the Night Elf Priestess of the Moon. Others lumber about more slowly, with punishing melee attacks like the Orc Tauren Chieftain. Still others, like the Human Arch-Mage, have their strengths in mana and spell casting ability. Blizzard allows you to make up to three heroes in a multiplayer match, the first one being free (just like the guy in the school yard selling the funny looking pills), and later ones costing progressively more money. You’re also not allowed to build your 2nd and 3rd heroes until you’ve upgraded your town center. Heroes accompanying an army comprise a big portion of any strike force. A smaller army escorted by a hero will just about always win out over a larger army sans hero, assuming you make good use of the hero’s special abilities.

Taking a 30% gold penalty for that

Poor Abomination is all alone

A valiant effort

If you can imagine taking a little bit of Diablo and sticking it into a WarCraft game, you have an idea of how heroes work. As they go through combat with enemy players and the NPC “creeps” on the map, they gain experience which can be used to level them up. Their already high number of hit points and mana increase with each level, and you get to choose from among two or three different spells or auras to learn each time your hero levels up. Each of the spells and auras has three levels, making it more powerful and effective with each successive level you add to it. This gives the player a choice. You can choose one single spell or aura, and pump all your points into it early on, or you can try to be more well balanced and spread your points around more evenly. The “right” choice will depend on the situation and what strategies your opponent is using that you need to counter. Auras are perhaps the most interesting hero ability, as they automatically confer their benefit to surrounding allied units with no cost in mana or need to manually cast. The Night Elf Priestess’ True Shot aura is a very popular one now, as it gives a damage benefit to any allied ranged units around her. It gives +2 damage at level one, on up to a whopping +6 damage per shot when fully upgraded to level three. The Undead Dread Lord has a Vampiric Aura that allows friendly units to regain small amounts of hp with each hit they deliver to an enemy.

Ultimates

Each hero has an ultimate ability that they can learn once they reach level five. These ultimate spells are often powerful enough that they can swing the tide of battle in favor of the player who can get them off the fastest and place theirs most efficiently on the swirling field of battle. Balancing it out is that these ultimates cost a lot of mana and usually have a long cool-down time, meaning that even if you had the mana to re-cast it, you still have to wait until the spell re-charges itself. All spells in the game have a certain cool down time, preventing rapid fire, repeated casting from the same unit. Ultimate spells include the Tranquility spell, cast by the Night Elf Keeper of the Grove. It’s basically a massive area effect healing that affects all allies in a large vicinity. The Human Paladin’s ultimate is Resurrection, which as you can guess, is an area effect spell that brings any surrounding dead units of his right back to life with full hp. This very powerful ability takes an entire day within the in-game day/night cycle to cool down before recasting.

The Frost Wyrm does big damage

Dread Lord and friends goes up against a Blademaster with Grunts

A fleet of Frost Wyrm dragons

Items

Heroes can also carry magical items in a six space inventory. The magical items can be attained by killing the NPC creeps littering the map, or by purchasing them from a Goblin Merchant. There are a wide variety of different wearable items that confer certain bonuses to the hero and/or his accompanying army. Rings of Strength buff up your hero’s hp and attack power, for example. Rings of Protection give your hero an armor bonus. There are also different scrolls and wands that have one-time or other limited use, such as the scroll of healing, which gives a one-time 100 hp boost to you and your army. You can also buy and pickup an array of health or mana potions that will heal your hero or give a quick boost to his mana. It’s also worth noting that each hero starts with a scroll of town portal. This scroll allows you to instantly teleport your hero and surrounding units back to any friendly town hall, including those of your teammates. You get caught outside of your base? Teleport in, instead of wasting time running from the other side of the map. Need to help a friend who’s getting double teamed? Teleport into his base. Scrolls are one-time use though, and are expensive to re-buy at the Goblin Merchant. Use them wisely!

As it stands now, most players are using just one hero throughout the game and letting it level up to very high levels. Some of the better players I’ve seen can manage two heroes effectively, and get them both up to level five over the course of a game. I’ve not yet tried doing all three heroes myself, partly because many games don’t get up to that very late-game stage. I play a relatively aggressive style, and the design of WarCraft III seems to suit that even more so. Players who turtle into their base will find that their heroes are underpowered from lack of combat, they have little money due to not expanding, and that the 90 unit cap prevents them from having too large of a standing army hiding behind all those towers they build.