o.5 Changelog (work-in-progress)

Bugfixes

- fixed various typing errors and missing description (not completely finished) (0.5e)
- improved overall game performance (I hope to improve the game performance by something along 50% or so, even with all the new stuff added to the maps) (0.5a)
- fixed wrong amount of Mana and health on upgraded vindicators (250 -> 400 mana, 820 -> 650 health) (0.5e)
- fixed Winged Serpents getting 1000 effective hitpoints from Manashield, lowered to 500 as intended (0.5e)
- fixed Divine Shield effect popping up on every unit (0.5e)
- fixed units stuck on some occasions (hopefully) (0.5e)

Graphics:

- added quite a few new spell effects for abilities
- added new icons for abilities
- removed some unnecessary eye candy which made the gameplay blurry
- lowered some unit sizes for better viewability
- updated some animations for certain units

Game Design:

There have been quite a few changes so far, and I actually went further to work on the existing standard races (read: add new content). Namely, each race got a 5th hero to choose from.

Human: Crusader - a tanky knight who can charge enemy units and improve his combat performance with frenzy. Pretty much an alternative to the Mountain King, with less unit nuke power but more overall damage output.
Orcs: Ogre Geomancer - a tanky strength hero with various earth based area damage spells and support abilities.
Undead: Plague Phantom - an agility, assassin type hero who can slow enemy units and deal high single target damage.
Nightelves: Grove Enchantress - ranged intelligence hero with a variety of healing and summon spells. Currently not entirely finished.

The idea behind this is to give existing races new ways to play their game. All old races will most likely receive a few additional units in the near futures. Currently I'm collecting ideas for them from old balancing topics, forum posts, shoutcasts etc. Time will tell what's coming, but yea, we'll see.

Balance

Human

- reworked Paladin Divine Shield ability: now is a target spell that creates invulnerability around the target unit, lasting 8/12/16 seconds for units and 4/6/8 seconds on heroes. 10 seconds cooldown, 75 mana cost, 500 cast range.
- Human Guard Towers now have 400 hitpoints (from 500), 1 Fortified armour (from 5 heavy)

Bloodelf

Gameplay:

- reworked main halls: Arcane Monastery - Sindorei Monastery - Sun's Pride Monastery. Applied new visuals to them.
- Carpenters harvest lumber now 2 times as efficient as before
- new building: Ambassador Workshop - produces Bloodelf mechanical units (see below) and their respective upgrades aswell as serving as lumber dropoff point. Produces Ballistae, Arcane Guardians and Arcane Construct
- reworked defensive Towers:
* Sentry Tower no longer fires bouncing missiles and has no critical strike anymore (unnecessary since the Arcane Patroller ability addition).
* Arcane Tower uses new missiles and model, more in line with other buildings/effects.
- reworked Arcane Guardian: Now it's an arcane-mechanical golem with decent attack and hitpoints, just like it was intended to be. Trained in Ambassador Workshop. Can learn Arcane Sight (stealth detection) and overcharge (deals waves of damage to nearby units but also damages itself in the process).
- new unit: Arcane Construct - a long range siege cannon. Cannot attack while moving and has to be deployed to shoot. Requires Sun's Pride Monastery [t3]
- new unit: Farstrider Scout - an Archer mounted on a hawk. A very mobile ranged air unit that can be used for harassing enemy units. Can learn Shackling Shots which ensnare enemy air units to the ground. Requires Shackling Shot upgrade. Trained in garrison, requires Forge and Sindorei Monastery [t2].
- new ability: Arcane Patrollers - Arcane Monasteries and upgrades can summon Arcane Guardians for base defense. Each Guardian lasts 65 seconds, maximum depends on teching level. t1 - 3, t2 - 4, t3 - 5 total.
- reworked mana shields. Now most Bloodelf units have larger mana pools, but lower basic hitpoints. Total "health" remains the same though
- reshuffled/reworked some spellcaster abilities:
- Pyromancer removed
- Sunseekers Ignite is now basic spell, 2nd ability Conflagrate, 3rd ability Warmth
- Duskblade Summoner: updated Art files. Replaced Dark Strength with Soul torrent; drains mana from the target unit, deals magic damage to it and replenishes mana nearby the caster.
- Bloodknight: removed prayer, replaced with Seal of Retribution, adjusted stats to work as regular skill. New ultimate: Judgment of Light - deals waves of holy energies to the target location, healing allies and dealing damage to enemies.

Stats:

- tweaked Avenger's Shield: now repels 50% of the attackdamage dealt. Grants 5 bonus armour and reduces incoming damage by 30% (from only effect of deflecting 33% damage)
- tweaked Sunstrider:
* Lowered damage output by 25%, increased lumber cost slightly. Now requires Sindorei Monastery [t2] (from Sun's Pride [t3])
* increased damage from Searing Arrows to 15 (from 10), fire can now kill units
- tweaked Conflagrate to last 5/2 seconds for units/heroes (from 8/3)
- lowered Winged Serpents damage output. They now can only hit 2 units in 300 area instead of 3 units in 450 area. Tweaked health. Increased Arcane Splittering mana cost to 100 (from 75)
- removed Sunwell Ring
- removed Void Staff, replaced with Wand of Illusions (120g). Provides up to 3 illusions of units/heroes.
- increased Carpenter cost to 70g (from 65), doubled Carpenter lumber gathering rate (hits tree 5 times for +10 lumber per trip)
- lowered Forge cost to 100g/60w (from 100/100)
- lowered Farm cost to 100g/30w (from 120g/30w)
- tweaked some details here and there
- Battle Training grants 3 bonus damage to Farstrider Scouts and Windweavers

Fel Orc

Gameplay:

- removed blight from fel orc buildings
- all Fel Orc buildings start off with 2 fortified armour now. Defensive Measures adds 2 with each upgrade level.
- Fel Orc Peons renamed to Peon Slaves
- new base defense mechanic: Peon Slaves can become disgruntled, increasing size, speed and damage significantly to deal with intruders
- new building sizes for Armoury, Cultist Circle and shop building
- Black Dragon Roost is buildable with Dimension portal now
- reworked Dragons available to Fel Orcs - Black Drake and Black Dragon instead of Black Dragons only.
* Black Drakes can breathe fire on enemy air units, dealing massive area damage to them. Can be upgraded to attack ground units with fire. They can be mounted by Marauders to create Swifters.
* Black Dragons are a heavily armoured air unit that can attack enemy ground units and ignite the ground. Cannot be mounted
- Removed Endless Rage from Moshers (too much raw damage potential). Instead they get a new passive ability: Bloodfrenzy - Whenever their health drops below a certain percentage the unit enrages, increasing attackspeed and movementspeed significantly.
- all Fel Orc units regenerate normally now instead of blight only. Regeneration rate is quite low, but can be increased with demonic blood.
- Black Valkyrie rework: Renamed to Blackhand Fayde. Has entirely new skillset: Shadow walk (replaces Black Wuju), Curse of Affliction (replaces Cripple), Chaotic Lightning (new ability, replaces passive) and Doom (which is a placeholder for another ability I'm working on. But the new ability will be very similar)
- farms no longer serve as drop off for lumber; lowered their cost and buildtime massively, but now only give 6 food instead of 10
- various smaller stats changes that will be noticed ingame
- Kodo Beastmasters get a new ability: trample. Charges into enemy units. Requires a tech. Tweaked Battle drums efficiency
- new unit: Taskmaster - can be trained in Shredder. Has abilities to buff nearby melee units. Is very resistant to enemy attacks
- reworked Orc spellcasters:
* Rogue Shaman uses new skillset: Tainted Element (autocast) -> Ruined Earth (channeling)-> Toxic Cyclone (channeling). Tainted Element grants bonus damage and cleaving attacks for melee units. Ruined Earth creates fissures on the ground which deal damage to nearby units. Toxic Cyclone: Creates a defiled cyclone in the target area, which damages and slows enemy units.
* Warlock uses tweaked skillset**: Demonic Purge (autocast) -> unholy power -> Curse of Sargeras
- Eredar Warlock: new ability - Nethershock, deals damage over time to all units in the target area.
- Enforcer - New ultimate**: The great hunt. Increases movementspeed of all nearby units. Ridden units (marauders) can move through enemy units to deal extra damage. (work in progress, not implemented yet)
- removed Hellbournes from the faction

** work in progress, might receive some changes still

Stats:

- Lowered Killing Command damage output slightly, instead the ability scales with duration
- demonic Blood requres Dimension Portal
- lowered Slayer Cultist damage slightly, removed base armour
- moved Slayer Cultists to Cultist Circle. Require Demon Portal now.
- lowered base attack speed for War Chief and Enforcer by ~25%
- tweaked movement speed from most units
- changed Battle Drums to provide +30% movementspeed and +15% attack from +20% movement and +40% attack.
- lowered Curse of Sargeras armour reduction to -2 (from -3) and movement reduction from 40% to 30%
- lowered Combat Stance armour bonus to + 2/3 (from + 3/5)
- lowered Rotten Ancestor damage to 15-18 (from 17-21)
- increased Mana cost for Unholy army to 150 (from 125), lowered duration slightly to spawn less Skeletal Orcs; removed Plague from Skeletal Orcs
- increased Mana cost for Unholy Power to 175 (from 100)
- lowered Bloodfiend/Fel Guard/Berserker hitpoints to 190/250/310 (from 230/290/370)

Orcs:

- lowered Blademaster Critical Strike damage multiplier to 1.5/2.25/3 (from 2/3/4)
- increased Windwalk mana cost to 85 (from 75), backstab damage to 30/65/80 from 40/70/100. Reduced movement bonus to 10/30/50% from 10/40/70%
- Healing Wave amount healed reduced to 120/195/270 (from 130/215/300), increased cooldown to 11s (from 9)
- lowered Hex duration on heroes to 3/4/5s from (4/5/6s)
- increased Feral Spirit mana cost to 85 (from 75) but also increased Wolf hitpoints to 230 on lvl 1
- Tauren Totem buildable in t2, Spirit Walkers are moved to it**
- lowered Ancestral Spirit (the revive ability for Tauren/Spiritwalkers) to 200 mana (from 250)
- lowered Shaman Purge manacost to 60 (from 75)


** work in progress, might receive some changes still

Nightelves:

- Demon Hunter Mana Burn cooldown increased by 1s; now burns 40-80-120 instead of 50-100-150 mana on each use.
- Increased amount of Treants spawned by Force of Nature to 3/4/5 instead of 2/3/4
- Natures' Blessing (building armour ability) now uses 2 upgrade levels in t1 and t2 instead of t2 only, with t1 providing 40% of the full bonus and t2 giving the other 60. The upgrade total cost is increased by 25% compared to the single tech solution.
- Moon Glaives requirement t3 replaced by t2**

** work in progress, might receive some changes still

Neutral:

- Panda breath of fire: lowered basic damage to 50/90/130 (from 65/125/165), increased the burning damage over time from 7/14/21 to 10/20/30 (overall, this is a slight buff, as the total damage increases. But this makes usage of healing scrolls against Panda easier)


I'd also like to point out the new bugs-topic in the balance discussions:
0.5b buglist


Items:

- Wand of Lightning Shield now is a lvl 3 charged item drop (from level 2).
- replaced some lvl 2 permanent drop spots with lvl 2 charged drops (so, there are less claws of attack dropping)
(Reasoning behind this: getting multiple claws of attack leads to ridiculous attackdamage bonuses on several heroes, Blademaster, Demon Hunter, Lich, to name a few. I have no idea why Blizzard went ahead and changed ALL item drops to drop lvl 2 permanent instead of just making Lightning Shield Wands lvl 3 drops to remove the imbalance vs. Human eco. I will rework the Burning Crusade maps with the upcoming version release to reflect this. Most likely there will be shared/ mixed item sets for permant and charged items to give a chance of getting both)

Maps

Forgotten Pools:
- natural Centaur camps changed to Centaur Drudges x2 + Centaur Sorcerers
- 2nd naturals stay the same
- removed Centaur Outrunner from nearby creep camps
- tweaked items given away from those spots



Keep in mind to keep me up 2 date!

Greetings
DarcReaver
updated 29/11/2015