Understanding One's Tactics--A HU Perspective

[h0bgawblin]

The point of the tier 2 push isn't to wait for your casters. Buildings that are in production have unarmored armor type. Using the water elementals and the quil beasts you take down the orcs tier 2 buildings and run like hell. In that time he cannot kill your foots, or your hero. After running, heal, bring casters and repeat. It's SO DIRTY!
I was trying to find out if pros waited for casters. So I grabbed my sky versus grubby game(star wars 2). Then saw nedech's game versus some random human. Low and behold, sky gave me the answer to my wood problem in the match up. It's freakin butter, first back from gold alter, first out lumber mill(!!!), 2nd out farm, 3rd out barracks, 2nd out ques farm. Then this is the brilliant part, if all timed correctly, the arcane tower gets put up with exactly the right amount of wood! The mans a genious. After that, build a farm in the back while creeping, tech, build an arcane vault during the tech, build another farm during the tech. Get your bm, run in and out, by that time your arcane sanctums are done. It's absurd, the only thing I have to watch out for is an attack on my base or creep jacks.

I had no idea why this tactic was so overpowered until now. Now for my tactics on the undead match up.

Am standard creep except in this match up, I don't tower like most humans do. What I don't understand is why other humans make this a tier 3 fight. I treat this exactly like my NE match up, but with more confidence. I try to creep to level 3 with the archmage, followed with 3 footies and 2 rifles and pumping priests with rifles. I run over with a panda(if he goes ghouls, with fiends I go mk) and bring ivories, 1 potion and militia. This creates multiple targets, and for some reason, i've always nailed down those ghouls without any problems. With the peasants laying down towers and my ivories I ussually establish a presence in my opponents base. He can't take down my army, so he goes and tries to force a tp. I watch carefully for surrounds and ussually have to end up using my potion. While he WILL try to focus my heros. My towers go up, and the pushing begins. The formula from here is mass rifles/priests (breakers with rifles instead of mass priests, if he goes fiends). Keep upgrading and keep massing towers. If he gets persistant, I ussually take an expo and make some morts at his base.

It's like butter, I don't have a problem against ud.

Now for my favorite, MIRROR!

I love to go am/blood mage in this mirror. I ussually turn it into a tier 3 fight, trying to take care of his peasants in the begining. I ussually use a milita/peasant to scout when he goes to creep then I run in there and lay down a blizzard. The shining moment of this match up is how I own the breaker wars(I get priests too). With am/bm blizz/flame strike, I power creep when I can. With high level blizz/FS, I can own knights, until then I stay breakers as a way to coax him into knights. What follows is this, opponent sais,"mass breakers? roflcopters meet knights." I response, "stfuppercut, aoe". In response,"breakers are magic immune nub! oh crap, when did he mass knights?!". The only bad part about my making knights with this hero combo, is I can only use it as a hero nuke or to rid myself of his priests.

There are a lot of things I have yet to learn about the human mirror. This tactic uses what I know about the matchup, and takes advantage of it, using the tactics I've worked into my playstyle.

My worst, human VS ne.

It's my worst for 1 reason, alls I know is run from dh, get level 2 and attack with a naga, 3 foots, 2 rifles, 1 pot, 1 priest, and militia(sound firmiliar?). It's seriously all I know other than lawlo ne tower rushing.

Thoughts? feedback? and of course, your own perspective!

[Basan]

Interesting, H0b'. Although from the Hu mirror point of view I thought that the Blood Mage 1st would perhaps be better due to less channelling time and also am thinking more of long term aspects to keep the opponent AM dry and even maybe getting the BM's ultimate. Ain't sure of it's worth, though. Just theorizing. :concern:

[GenocideAlive]

In close spawns or 2P maps, try instead rushing him with 3 foots, 5 peasants, and a WE AM. Summon one WE before you get there, and the second when you arrive. Cancel buildings with AM/foots and build towers with peasants. Rally more foots to the spot, and once you get enough going (or run out of food), research Defend.

Or you can do it the long way, where you creep 2-3 camps for 7-8 foots, get Defend on the way to his base with 5 peasants, and Dust-pwn.

[Dayoh]

sky gave me the answer to my wood problem in the match up. It's freakin butter, first back from gold alter, first out lumber mill(!!!), 2nd out farm, 3rd out barracks, 2nd out ques farm

Damn i just gave u that build in anouther thread, i dont watch many pro replays.

My worst, human VS ne
Ashame NE has like the l33test hero! Anyway you could rush NE but i think its best not too.

I find teir 2, will be where the game is "GG", you gain access to Morts.
Morts own all NE range so u dont have to worry about those pesky driads (did i spell right lol)
NE's ussually jump to teir 2 aswell, for bears and those D guys lol.
If you stick with AOE hero's, get like 2 morts in there maybe some rifles, i think that would work. Sorcs for slow would be good but then the D guys would use that spell lol. Anyway thats what i would do against them.

[Prozerran]

The lumbermill substitutes for one footie. This means your AM will come out with only one Footie to creep with instead of two. Be sure and use some militia on your first creep so you don't lose to a jacking opponent and you'll be fine. It's almost always worth selecting WE until at least level 3 and switching to Blizzard only if you severely need the AoE (vs HH's, for instance). Otherwise, this build was originally designed to give Hu an opening Guard Tower instead of Arcane against Wolves. Since Blizzard patched it a while back, Arcane Towers deal more damage to wolves and are therefore, economical. The initial foot is thought to be more important than an early lumbermill. However, if faster tech is your goal, an early lumbermill always helps.

Usually, Hu expo's in most scenarios. Against Orc, they often go the fast tech, Mass Summon/Caster crap and don't always build the lumbermill to pull it off. Keep looking at different replays and seeing how other players handle it. Pro's often tend to stick to cookie-cutting, so check member replays on WCReplays. You'll sometimes find some really good games of the match-up and opponents doing a much better job of adapting macro-wise.

[h0bgawblin]

I had a discussion with a former high level night elf player. he said two interesting things.

night elf match up

"Try going blood mage first, you can work around creeping, you really only need level 2 for the tier 2 push. Instead of going casters, you can go rifle morts. In combo with a panda haze and flame strike, the morts will devour the archers and dryads. besides, dryads 2 shot we's so for the push they arn't that useful." (I plan on trying it, along with different rush strats.)

Orc match up

Friend"if he goes shadow hunter and creeps wards up, your tier 2 push will be hard to do because he can establish a position."

MY arguement, "he would be sacrificing his tier 1 advantage and allow me to gain massive amounts of exp against him."

Friend, "not really, the orc doesn't ussually creep much in tier 1, he will still try to creep jack you. Besides, you can use wards and have a grunt weave in and out of them. It's not wolves, but it buys some time, especially on bigger mobs."

me, "Intersting, but no one goes solo SH."

Friend, "True, but someone who's used to running him solo will be hard to deal with."

Some thoughts on those little notes would be great. Also, this is a human perspective, but is also my perspective. If you notice, every single match up I use am. I like am, but i've tried to use different heros in the mix. IE BM in the ne match up.

Also dayoh, I remember your early lumber mill suggestion, but the build order that I saw sky use mad it look smooth. I didn't know how to introduce a lumber mill to my start. As a response to proz, the idea, like you said, is a quicker tech. Even more sexy than that however, is that I only need to use about 2 militia to cover for that foot creeping. Militia also do more dmg, so I'll just go for some greens to get level 2.

If anyone else has insight as to a different perspect for human, or thier own racial understanding. I encourage you to post, if you don't i'll cut off your thumb :).

[Prozerran]

I have one more thing to add here, Hob. Human is the best race to expand early with. If the tactic is perfected, you'll have a considerable resource advantage with a slightly later tech than your opponent. It's important to realize this, because your obsession with teching faster may eventually end up hurting you more than helping you. I would encourage you to take advantage of Human's ability to expo early... it's the biggest advantage for Human and one players of all other races complain about more than anything else - because of towers. Just keep it in mind.

[h0bgawblin]

I was considering this after watching an imbalanced video. There is a strat that a pro got by using, quick expo mass towers and build mass units. I relize it's amazing, but I need practice on my quick expansion in almost all areas. Unfortunately, out of all the things I fear practicing against the computer, it is this. That's why, when I get back online, I plan to work on this strat. Hopefully against an opponent who will most likely give me an ulser from stress. If not, my friends can mass ghouls and attack me.

Quick expansion has never been a strong point of my play. It's always been about creeping and attacking when I like the odds. Even when I first started playing human. I'm not saying I don't like it, however, it would take a change in my mentality. Truthfully, what makes me the most afraid, is knowing what map, race, and time it's good in.

I remember playing cole1, he was playing UD(at the time, this match up was pretty weak) and I tried to quick expo on echo isle. I got it up, even when cole did some harrassing(his micro>mine) but it took a while. That game I mined 6k more gold than he did. Guess who won, him. Every game I tried to quick expand against him, and he said I was predictable. So I tried to stay away from it, especially because my micro kinda sucks to be frank.

I'm trying to work on that, but it's hard and I don't know how to learn it faster. Even in the begining of learning the LT quick expand trick, most players shot me down from getting it. My micro is pretty bad. I'm currently trying to see a way to expand, without becoming unaggressive. It's a difficult mentality to find, and i'm big on mentality. I have actually considered an training routine (without one, I ussually don't improve) but don't know what to put in it for micro.

I plan to face as many people on the forums as I can to get better once my internet is up. Otherwise, i'm stuck playing my friend who can't find his way out of his own ass. Not to mention, he's undead, and I wtfpwn ud.

[cole]

Yea, if you do the same strat every game vs the same player eventually that player will develope his own counter to it or find one.

[GroG]

FE is overrated. Only good on LT, gnoll wood, and TM. Sucks on Echo, TR, and other 2P maps. But I digress.. Micro is only important on getting it the FE up, past that just worry about macroing. And if you FE on a huge map like LT, then you really don't even have to have that good of micro.

As for solo SH, I'd have to see it to believe it I guess. I can't see jacking with him behind very easy, you don't have a great direct damage like coil or WW/crit or anything, nothing to keep units there, so they can run as soon as they see you coming. He'd be good for creeping with wards, but that's about it. If I was going to use SH first, even if I wanted wards, I'd almost HAVE to start with hex just to get good creepjacks going and get some unit kills + creep skills. So I'd either have to open Hex/Ward/Ward/Heal or just break down and go Hex/Ward. I guess wave isn't as important in OvHu anyways, since you could easily go SW's and use link to make wave not needed as much.

Your friend is probably high level, probably awesome, but from me to you I say bloodmage first HuvNE will suck. The two main heroes NE's use (non-tavern), DH and Warden, both will own the bloodmage, and you will basically be stuck in your base unless your sneaky and creep in a radical new creeping order, costing you time. You can probably get away with this on larger maps, but not on echo for sure.

Anyways, that's my 2 cents.

[h0bgawblin]

I appreciate it grog, and FYI, this friend of mine hasn't played in a good 2 years. He has good input, however, I likes my AM! I am currently thinking of doing WE, brilliance, then another brilliance aura. That way, I can forked lightning, which is more fun. I will have to keep trying other stuff though, am is fun, but there is too much of a good thing. I will probably goof off in 4v4's or against friends that suck for a change of pace.

[GenocideAlive]

Nah, you've got to take higher level WEs at every opportunity. An extra mana per second won't give you any noticable edge, whereas the difference in levels between WEs is fucking ridiculously huge.

[Prozerran]

Nah, you've got to take higher level WEs at every opportunity. An extra mana per second won't give you any noticable edge, whereas the difference in levels between WEs is fucking ridiculously huge.

Hence, why we call them level 3 Water Tauren. That's not far from the truth. If you're going AM, WE's are almost always better for your first and third pick. The only exception might be the mirror match - where you can Bliz harass gold-mining peasants and go Tinker 2nd for a Tier 2 push with Casters and Breakers.

[GenocideAlive]

And as for the whole FE thing, yeah, it's great. But the problem with it (and hence why I quit playing HU) is that it pretty much guarantees a 25-minute minimum game. Once you get up your expo, you can pretty much take your time to get your forces rolling since you can turn away pretty much anything they throw at you.

But then, if they expand themselves, you've both got an expo and no way of stopping the others' expo. BM harass can help in prevention, but if he sticks his DH (or equivalent) there while his army is at his base, you've got no chance. Then you're forced to mass armies on either side of your bases, and basically spend the next half hour throwing them at each other.

Then, win or lose, the game is decided at the 45-60 min mark. Spending one hour to win (or even lose) a game is totally not worth it. You need to get around 20 of those under your belt to get a level--a solid day's worth of play for one level that will decay away in a month is a total waste of life.

[h0bgawblin]

I really only like doing a FE on maps like lost temple or teranis stand. In teranis stand, one can get away with it without mass towers in my experience. I have seen insomnia do it with great results, even though he was out microd and out played by fov. It obviously gave him a great advantage. Also, GA, speaking of TS, I was thinking a lot about your MK first vs UD. In TS the MK can tank the lab+priest camp without much difficulty at all, and if the DK comes running in, he doesn't have a lot of room to work with. Easy surround comes to mind, taking the DK out of the early game. It would be quite a site to see the mk level 3 so quickly. Follow that up with a pally, and it's delicious.

I was also thinking of ways to use MK first in other tight creeping situations vs ud. Wouldn't it be nice to coax that unsuspecting DK over to you if he sees a militia creep. Once he relises he isn't facing an archmage, it might be too late.

As for the rushing of ne, i'm finding it delicious, I hate those bastards. I can never wait to kill those soft, night elf, BODIES!

In response to the post above GA, I like playing human for tier 2. The second I hit tier 2, I use my absurd advantage that I get against almost every race and try to end the game. Tier 2 pushes are simply gold.

[GenocideAlive]

Well, the problem that I have with tier 2 pushes as HU is that everybody expects them and knows how to deal with them. Thus, I avoid them. I much prefer off-the-wall shit that nobody has seen before that I've gotten a lot of practice with so that it's relatively easy for me to exploit my strategy. If I do the cookie tier 2 push, everybody's macro builds are basically geared to stop it. From there it's a matter of making it work ANYWAY, which seems retarded to me.

As for creeping with MK, don't leave base until you've got 5 foots, queue a few more to your MK (not many). Then when you leave the base, if you see the DK, he's dead--simple as that. It doesn't matter what he's doing or whether or not he's in melee range. You only use maybe one Bolt during the whole time you're creeping--just the "main" bad guy (or support caster) and that's it. The rest of the MK's mana you save for when the UD player is stupid enough to pop up with a DK.

I don't know how many games I win at tier 1 from stupid people trying to make a harass work that is doomed to failure. DH's, DK's, etc. die over and over because people base their ENTIRE GAME around their ability to slow my creeping with their hero. So when they show up, Sleep surround, Bolt surround do them in immediately. Orc is pretty much the only race that's incapable of early surrounds.

[h0bgawblin]

Mmm, surrounds are truly delicous. However, I was refering to the militia creep on the lab/priests in TS. The 5 foots answer my question for almost every other map though. Thanks mate.

[Basan]

The only surround chance I see in early Orc is with Hex... but we all know that keeping him at a good efficiency level, due to low HP's, is the main problem (even though he's my fav' hero in that race). And when saying this am thinking more of keeping him away from off the DH's, DK's and DL's harassing prowess than anything else. And even the eventual MK's 1st pick, although that one isn't very common to happen.

Eh, even though currently I am extremely bad when playing melee (UMS's can do that to ya :P), I'll try put a play with it and then post a replay to see if I can bring some live into the "off the wall strats put to life" thread that GA made a while back. Although it may take good while to pull it (even more provided Orcs are one of races I've least played with). :concern:

[GenocideAlive]

Actually, for a while there I played with SH first in mirrors. When you and the enemy FS see each other with your two grunts, dance a little, juke a little, then suddenly start FF'ing the FS with everything. When he starts running, Hex. Keep hitting him and run ahead of wherever he's trying to go. When he repops, keep your weapons on him until Hex cools down and repeat. If you have 4 grunts, you can just surround him. God knows how many FS kills I got doing that.

The bad part is that it sticks you with Hex mid-lategame, at which point you're taking Hex / Healingwave, both of which are very mana-intensive. But it's worth it, because you can skip the Beastiary and go with Shammies + SWs. You can LS your TC, put a pot on him, and go in with Stomp. They FF him, you just pop your pot, Stomp, Hex any units trying to box him in, and Healing wave him. It can be a real bitch for both of you to manage, him for all the crap you're throwing at him and you for all the mana you're draining.

The major downfall of this is, OFC, a creeping FS on a big map. If you're crosspawn on Gnoll Wood, you can bet your ass that you're probably going to lose. The FS will be L2 by the time you reach him (with you being stuck at L1), and he'll probably have enough Grunts to give you problems in surrounds / kills. If you creep instead, you're screwed. He'll get L3.5 and you'll be L2, and he'll push you with FL/FS Grunts + Raiders and you'll be struggling with expensive spells and poor returns. The best you can hope for in that scenario is a jack for a Grunt kill or two, which can make up the level advantage while giving you a gold edge (blunting his tier 2 push).

Let me know if you want to try it, though. I was at loathe to try RR's Panda strategy because the Panda is a fucking whore and he's overused already, I didn't want to popularize him. >:(

[Prozerran]

While I agree with the LS/TC/Stomp combo, I have to say that in and of itself doesn't really convince me that it's better than SH/BM. Hex/WW/CS is a nuke in its own rite, don't you think? Do you have to go BM first for it to work, though? Can it work if you begin with SH for hex and go BM second?

And as for the whole FE thing, yeah, it's great. But the problem with it (and hence why I quit playing HU) is that it pretty much guarantees a 25-minute minimum game. Once you get up your expo, you can pretty much take your time to get your forces rolling since you can turn away pretty much anything they throw at you.

But then, if they expand themselves, you've both got an expo and no way of stopping the others' expo. BM harass can help in prevention, but if he sticks his DH (or equivalent) there while his army is at his base, you've got no chance. Then you're forced to mass armies on either side of your bases, and basically spend the next half hour throwing them at each other.

Then, win or lose, the game is decided at the 45-60 min mark. Spending one hour to win (or even lose) a game is totally not worth it. You need to get around 20 of those under your belt to get a level--a solid day's worth of play for one level that will decay away in a month is a total waste of life.

I agree with this, which is kind of why I hate how laddering works nowadays. Everyone goes for the quick Tier 1 towering or the Tier 2 push. Even if they lose, it's better than spending 30-40 minutes to win that game because they could have played 2-3 more in that time. I've run into more games where an opponent comes in to tower me, I militia my peasants, force them to retreat, and they quit. Can they win? Maybe. Do they try? No, because it's not worth it. I can't become a better player by only stopping tower rushes and Tier 2 rushes. There's more to the game than cookie-cutting.

[h0bgawblin]

I don't quit so easily if my tier 2 push fails. I ussually try to expo to compensate then start trying to nail down heroes. I like tier 2 pushing, hence why I do it. I don't do it because it's cookie cutter, though that helps my win%.

Also, BM seconds gimps the damage in the BM/SH combo. However, it has a potential in the human match up. SH can possibly defeat or give trouble to, the human tier 2 push. That said, we can all agree that a level 1 BM > a level 2 AM.

[Prozerran]

I think the point I'm trying to make is how similar the laddering system is to, say, a sales job. In sales, it's all in the numbers. The more people you talk to, the higher your percentages will be if you are an effective salesman. In the laddering system is identical. Sure, you have to use an effective strategy, but you don't have to win every game to get a high level, you just have to play a buttload of games. The more games you play, the higher your percentages are... and I'm not complaining about that... that's fine.

However, people take the cookie-cut approach, play 10 minutes, and if they haven't won they quit, because the return is more significant if they spend the next 10 minutes playing a game they win.

If I had the time to commit to test it, I would, but I don't. If someone has the time to commit to testing this, I think it'd be a fun little experiment. Taking two people of similar skill level (it won't be perfect and of course there's a probability of experimental error), have both players play the same race. As human, one player will play a full game until they win or lose (reasonably, losing all heroes and army against a 50+ food worth army is grounds for conceding, but don't just give up if you make a mistake and don't try to turn it around). The other player will tower rush every game. If the tower rush fails or you haven't won in 10 minutes or less, quit and play another match. Each player would have 2 weeks playing 5 hours a week. Then, we compare the results.

GA, RR, I volunteer both of you, as you're both of similar skill level. Doesn't have to be Human, but smurf using the same race or the results will be even more skewed by match-up percentages (so the race would need to be the constant in this experiment). You can play any race you want as long as you have a short-game comparable to tower rushing. If you're interested, post a thread with the results.

If this has already been done, please disregard and post a link to the explanation of findings.

[GroG]

Dude, stop overanalyzing that shit and play the game =/ It's the exact same on BW, on what used to be PGTour. You spent the first 20-30 games wading through players who cheese rush you or something (bunker rush TvZ on luna or crap like that), then when you start playing good people crap like that doesn't happen.

Besides that, as you play, you get better at "preventing" cheese. I think the last 30 games or so when I was in L20's range, I got tier 2 pushed a total of 3 times. Whereas when I was under L10 every other game was trying to survive the tier 2 push. It's just because dumb smurfers want to get to see how fast they can get to 8-0 before they lose and start a new account. These are the losers of this game, they have no concept of actually playing or having fun. They think they are good cause they can go 8-0 and play a L40 player and come kinda close to winning. I really started out frustrated by tier 2 pushes, but then I ended up feeling sorry for those players, too insecure to stick to an account, to insecure to play a full game more than 10 minutes long. They are missing out on soooo much.

That is the explanation. Can you get to a higher level doing the quitting thing? No, because eventually you'll have to actually start playing games, people won't lose vs. tower push and you'll be fucked, stuck at L12 or something and with a rec of 8-0 turned into 10-12. Plus, tier 2 push only works on small maps like echo and terenas, so it only works on half the maps anyways.

Anyways, sorry. /rant

[GenocideAlive]

Hehehe, good rant, Grog. +rep for you.

Back to overanalyzing, though, don't ever take the BM second or you'll lose. You only need L1 Hex to prevent running and hero TPing, L2 & L3 Hex only add one second. Wards aren't really useful, because piercing damage is miserable against hero armor. So again, you want WW/CS/WW/CS/CS/BL and Hex/W/W/Hex/W/BBV. The second point in WW is for the increased duration, speed, and damage, the third point in CS is because L3 WW doesn't add anything but duration and crappy dmg.

As far as towering goes, I don't really see a lot of towering, but I'm getting back to the thirties in levels. I kept landing Random-Orc (like, 12/16!!), so I started quitting games at the 0:00:2 mark because I was sick of playing with them, and I think that might have fucked up my ELL. Anyway, towering is mostly by newbs and is fairly easy to stomp in most situations.

UD --> skellie wand at graveyard + wood ghouls
HU --> suicide
Orc --> difficult, strong early game race w/great siege & countertowers
NE --> stupidwells and ancients make great forces

Your best bet is usually early game NE or UD. They have shitty towers, bad natural early-game base defense and poorer tier 1 units. OFC, I'm still running 90% in Gruntapult + towers vs. UD, so I really think they have a tough time of it--Chainwave, Grunts, and Catas just MURDER them.