Be Morkeliph's WarCraft Coach - The Contest

[Morkeliph]

So here's the deal: I'm not terribly good at warcraft online. That is to say I have around a 50% win average. I would like some tips, however, on how I can improve my gameplay. I will post replays from battle.net games that I have recently lost and open them up to you for commentary and criticism on my performance. What's in it for you?

Good feedback/critique will be rewarded with reputation points from yours truly. Additionally, I thought it would be fun to make a little competition out of this. So here's the rules for the contest:

I will submit 10 replays in this thread and give at least a week between in which participants can view them and reply with their feedback/suggestions.
Each participant's feedback for a given replay will be graded for the following criteria:
Clarity - how clearly were your suggestions communicated? (0-7 pts)
Relevance - how relevant were your suggestions to actual situations in the replay? (0-7 pts)
Generality - how much did your suggestions generalize to applicable situations outside of the specific situations encountered in the replay? (0-7 pts)
Flexibility - how adaptive/flexible were your suggestions to unexpected events or situations encountered in general gameplay? (0-7 pts)
Application - how much of an impact did your suggestions make on subsequent gameplay success? (0-7 pts)

All grading will be down between myself and two other individuals and the scores given between the 3 judges will be averaged to determine the actual score you receive on each criterion.
Only the first feedback from each participant for each replay will be graded, so make sure that it's your very best!
The winner(s) will be announced after all replays have been posted and all feedback has been evaluated. This will occur no longer than 3 weeks after the last replay has been posted.


So what does the winner get? Well, I'm afraid not much, but here's what I can offer:

Public acknowledgment in my signature for no less than 6 months.
My entire music library in mp3 form on CD.
The awe and respect from all of the .ORG Network (whatever that amounts to).

[Yoda]

I watched the replay and took notes while I was doing so. Although your gameplay isn't terrible, there were two things which kept recurring. Firstly, you had a tendency to chase his Lich in inadvisable situations. And secondly, your macro could have been improved (i.e. getting what counters your opponent). :) Here's an in-depth analysis.

Although it wasn't much of an issue in this case, you should position your base differently. People generally place their lumber mill and peasants near the back or side of their base for extra protection in addition to some base defence (e.g. arcane tower/burrows/moonwells). However you had your lumber peons at what could be described as the "front line." Although there is theoretically more wood there, they would have been very easily harassed as you did not make any towers or burrows in that area. Lucky he didn't DK harass you. Something to consider for the future. ;)

Healing Salves are your friend if you play as orc. You should have picked them up earlier and healed your orange + red grunts after some were wounded creeping before battling your opponent. If you did this, you might not have lost the grunts that you did.

The most obvious mistake made (no offence!) was when you chased the enemy Lich into his base. This is plausible if he's on low health and you can "definately" kill him, or if he's the only one left, but not in the scenario in that game. His base contained many towers, and you let his army take a lot of free hits. Don't "run" into an undead base if it can be helped as they are generally well guarded.

It's important to always scout, and counter whatever your opponent is making. You could see that he was massing ghouls and towers. Although tauren + casters could counter that, you should've just made some air units, with some demos to kill the towers and a meatshield (grunts). And if you are making tauren, you need to get Pulverise as soon as you can, especially if it's against ghouls. The AOE helps a lot. Later in the game, you must have seen the dual-TOTD. This means that he is (probably) massing necros, which would mean making spirit walkers to counter them. I think you were a bit late in doing that. At the first battle where your opponent used necros, it would have helped if you both had more SWs and if you had used Disenchant sooner. Don't fight summoned units if you can dispell them - it's a waste of soldiers otherwise. This is especially true against mass-summons - remember the hotkeys and use control groups if it helps.

One final criticism - near the end of the game, his Lich was using death and decay against a few of your buildings. I can't remember if your SH had enough mana or not, but if you did, you definately should have hexed him. This would have stopped it and saved your main.

[GenocideAlive]

Well, I've got good news and bad news.

The bad news is that you suck horribly, all around.

The good news is that you have huge room for improvement and you played a tower whore, so it's not entirely your fault.

Build Order:

All five peons to goldmine.
Queue 3 more.
Pull one from the line and have him build an altar.
Next one out makes a burrow.
Next one out goes to goldmine.
Next one out makes a barracks.
Keep queuing them to wood to 17 food.
At 160G 40W, build a burrow.
When rax completes, @ 200 G buy grunt.
At 200G again, buy another grunt.
Tech as wood allows.
Build next rax during tech, not before.

The way you did it, you pretty much made your hero as slow as possible and delayed your tech for an early warmill (completely unnecessary), another rax (also unnecessary), and another burrow (guess whether or not it's necessary). If you delay your tech for anything, do it for an earlier Voodoo Lounge so you can harass more effectively.

Creeping:

A creep casts Faerie Fire on a Grunt, and then starts hitting him. No, no, no. Do not let a unit with Faerie Fire on it get hit by a creep. Just back it off for 2s, the creep will aggro a different unit, then re-engage with the Grunt. He's basically amplifying damage on your Grunt (by around +20%!) because you're too dense to move him back.

You also spend a lot of time creeping out goldmines near your opponent. Especially when you've got your opponent contained like that, you don't want to give him the chance to creepjack you for an advantage. To make matters worse, he'll have easy access to harassing your mines and using an empty spot to expand himself. He does just that, creepjacking you and then taking that mine spot for an expand.

When he jacks you, you make the mistake of hitting the TP and sort of letting your Grunts hang out there. Hit the TP and run them the opposite direction of your jacking opponent! You lose a Grunt for your carelessness, then you leave the wad of hurt Grunts in front of your base while you micro your base. No, no, no. Put them in the back of the base so a fishing nuking opponent can't wander in and zap you for some cheesy kills. This was one of the times you gain an advantage from your camping whore opponent.

Macro:

BM is a shitty hero against UD, period. He can be nuked to hell and back for attempting to herokill, and usually is...but he's good for pretty much nothing else. He's only worth something during the UD tech for harassing acolytes to death. Doesn't work against skilled players, they'll get a nerub near their mine and they'll Dust when you WW. Additionally, I always smile when I see BM vs. UD, because BM makes Ghouls viable. Whereas FS + TC completely rapes Ghouls, without Chain Lightning, Ghouls are terrific for surrounds and general beats.

Then, at tier 2, you get tons of Grunts and...Witch Doctors?! Then Tauren?!?! You don't get casters or Tauren against an UD, period. They will get Destroyers, and Destroyers are enough of an Orc problem without you feeding them mana for their Orb of Annihilation + exp for their heroes. If you would have gotten CATAPULTS instead, for GRUNT-APULT (staple Orc tactic), your opponent would have been finished right there. Start towers outside of the range of his towers, and begin lobbing catapult shots into his towers. He comes out, fights, and wins before 60s is up, or it's GG for him. This game should have been over @ 10 min.

Tactics:

Instead, you mass casters and he masses Ghouls and towers. You zerg his base and towers repeatedly, making the noob mistake of going for the Lich with all your units again and again...and again...and again. He runs the Lich away, his towers + Ghouls get free beats on your Grunts, your BM does dick and you're turned away with a superior force. You BM target weak heroes and units, you don't turn your entire melee force onto chasing him around at full health.

Finally, he hits tier 3 and begins the process of getting upgraded casters. You stick with making Tauren & casters and keep trying to zerg down his base without using either Spirit Link, Bloodlust (ALWAYS manually cast on BM before fight!!!!!!!) or Disenchant with much effectiveness. Once his full casters make the scene, your Tauren are Possessed (no surprise) and you're viciously beaten. Instead of switching over to mass Wyverns (which UD can't beat, btw) and totally tearing his shit to kingdom come, you try to pump more of the same bullshit.

Of course, BM and SH are soundly beaten, because they're both extremely low HP heroes and you've got Hex (nearly worthless the entire game) and Wards. If you would have had Healing Wave and Wards, you could have had a use for all that SH mana, and been able to keep your BM alive better during fights when he gets focus-fired (assuming you never learn what Spirit Link does).

And your Bladestorm use deserves a paragraph of its own: Bladestorm deals 110 damage per second in a giant AoE. Use it to take down some of those 5 fucking billion towers, those clumped casters, or even just some of his tech buildings. Do NOT run your Blademaster to the front of your army then right-click his full HP Lich in the hopes that it will mow him down. It will get your Blademaster focus-fired dead, and you're using about 5% of Bladestorm's potential to do nothing. Because no-one is stupid enough to stand still for 7 seconds while their hero is slowly drained of life by a giant animated whirlwind. Bladestorm alone could have won you this game.

I completely understand your frustration, because you had this in the bag so many times, but you refused to do anything other than chase his Lich into his towers. Here's a game of what gruntapult looks like. He gets raped, but he pretty much does it right. Can't fault him for that.

[Morkeliph]

Hey, these are great critiques, and they're very helpful. It's really too bad that I'm such a newb, but what can you do other than play more and seek others' advice. Anyway, keep them coming. I'll PM you your evaulation scores from all 3 judges once they are done.

[GenocideAlive]

I demand more reviews to assess your progress. I am going to be an ineffective coach if I cannot give you pointers.

[GroG]

That was one hell of a game, lol. I'm gonna watch it again, then give you some advice I guess. Give me a day or two ;p