Aqo is Human!

[Aqo]

durr hurr spamming rifles durr wyvrens and blademaster killing my peasants durr priests heal knights and rifles pwn wyvrens durr BLOOD MAGE LOL

Just watch it :P
Human(Aqo) vs Orc 33 minutes

Tell me where I could improve!
I told some guy I could pwn him at WC3, so I figured I'll play a bit and practice before I get to play him. lolol my skill is shit, last time I played was RoC days xD

[Dayoh]

Ok, I went on Bnet doing a main rifle strat lol. I was going rifle/mort then i changed it to rifle/tanks but i didnt have time for the tanks.

I still made mistakes but i think its decent feedback lol

Hum Vs Und here, it is different than Hum Vs Orc but theres rifles in there ;)

(This game went for like 11 mins i think, decent games in WC3 1v1 ussually go for 15 mins not 30 lol)

[GroG]

Aqo:


I usually go altar/rax/farm
You waited a really long time to make your hero
Tank with hero while creeping, he regens health faster (until he gets to yellow or so health, then spread around dmg so scroll heals all)
Losing riflemen sucks, move your BM when he gets lightning on him so he doesn't hurt your units
7:50 I don't know how your opponent didn't just win here.. when your units are all in red hp just hide the red units somewhere and fend him off with the remainder of your units and militia - you don't ever militia, use them more and surround units to get kills if possible
11:05 you are attacking his base and his shit tps in and you don't pull back, in fact you let his grunts move up into your army and start killing your stuff, this is horrible melee > ranged
11:10 you lose pally cause you don't micro him, that sucks don't let that happen
I would've tped before losing all my army except my bloodmage here
14:00 he has more grunts than you do rifles yet you continue to fight, run away or tp
19:00 you pretty much lose half your peons, you let your ranged army get surrounded, and you lose a lot of stuff, if your opponent was halfway decent you would've lost right here (especially considering you lost your army twice already)
expanding with 2 peasants at least with humans, worth the investment to get exp up faster
20:00 you were so outnumbered here, plus he had wyverns.. just run away and mass more shit instead of losing what you have

Your opponent squandered his opportunity to win more than you beat him, IMO. He just kept running away for some reason..

[Aqo]

Yeah I seriously failed then.

Right now I got this build order which seems to be real nice for rifles:
4peons -> gold
5th -> Altar
6 -> Farm with blacksmith on queue
the rest to chop chop trees.
Once I got 50 lumber, count the amount of chops and bring two peons back with wood to get 60. This should be just enough to start a barracks with my altar peon right as it's done with the altar.
Basically pop like 4 rifles or so then keep.

I have a serious problem with night elf demon hunter rushes, he steals all my hero's mana, what's the best way to counter that?

Also, how many peons do I need per gold mine? Right now I'm using 5, but from the looks of their movement it appears that 6 would actually mine faster, and I need gold a lot more than lumber in general.

Also, can you please go over a new rep? Other than being careless and letting my mountain king die early on (it got stuck between my units >_>) what mistakes did I have here?

[Prozerran]

You've got a couple of replays. I'll make one comment on both (even though it really doesn't apply to your second game because your opponent was weak).

Militia.

Unless something changed, you can still militia peasants and defend yourself. When Orc rushed you with Grunts and BM, your initial reaction should be to select your hall and click 'C' for call to arms. This is the poor-micro human's way of getting surrounds, especially when your opponent hits your Gold peasants. I've rarely not gotten surrounds doing this, which is why most good players go for the lumber peasants as not to get surrounded.

Your second game was admittedly better than your first. The BO second game was more appropriate on that map. On EI, since it's small and easy to harass early on, Rifle-first generally isn't that great of a strategy, IMO. Foots are cheaper and give less exp. than Rifles, so an AM/Foot or MK/Foot is more appropriate.

Otherwise, I really like what you're doing. It's a bit old school (let's hear it for RoC), but it's pimp gameplay.

Oh, and Dayoh. Did I count 10 Riflemen in your replay, or was I seeing double vision? Who needs 10 bloody Riflemen? I'll tell you who! Someone with a small penis, that's who!

J/k :)

At Tier 2, just in case anyone wants to know, 6 Rifles are generally the most you need. Fill the control with Breakers, Casters, and if you need added counter, FM's or Hawks. My personal Tier 3 Fave - Hawks and Tanks! "Oh, you have towers? That's too bad..."

[Aqo]

I did some experimenting and I think I have to disagree with you on the 6-rifles part Prozerran; I usually get around 8 of them, fully upgraded (both attack and defense) along with sorceresses & spellbreakers, and maybe mortar teams or priests, and this kind of army does one thing real good: KILL heroes when my mountain king casts a storm bolt at them. The heroes just die so fast that it's totally worth it. I keep producing rifles all game long. I tried tactics like switching to knights in lategame but with full upgrades and hero support rifles are just too good.

I'm really curious about what neutral hero gives an aura that helps ranged units. I'm not really familiar with them... so far I've been using paladin which helps a great deal with rifles, since every single heal basically gives me an extra unit, and mana potions are THAT cheap. But I figured maybe focusing on offense would yield more interesting results ;p

[Prozerran]

I did some experimenting and I think I have to disagree with you on the 6-rifles part Prozerran; I usually get around 8 of them, fully upgraded (both attack and defense) along with sorceresses & spellbreakers, and maybe mortar teams or priests, and this kind of army does one thing real good: KILL heroes when my mountain king casts a storm bolt at them. The heroes just die so fast that it's totally worth it. I keep producing rifles all game long.

I'll teach you to disagree with me!!!!!

J/k :)

No, I see the rationality. I didn't really explain mine well enough to you, though (at least to my satisfaction). With all the nerfing that happened to Rifles, the costs often outweigh the benefits. Just bare with me here...

Every time you engage in battle, you're going to lose about 40% to 80% of your rifles on average. I've watched enough replays to know that Riflemen are just easy to pick off in battle even upgraded. Sure, the offensive potency is great with Bolt/FF, but the disadvantage is that you'll have to replace a large portion of them each time you go engage. You're actually better off TPing out each time your opponent comes home to defend - you'll spend less on a TP at 350g compared to the 3-6 Riflemen you'll inevitably lose at 205g and 30w a piece.

So you've got to weigh that against the offensive approach you're taking here. Rifles give you a ranged advantage and casters are great support, but all are lower health units. Even with above-average micro, you'll see the costs go up for that which slows you down and requires you to have an expo.

If it were me, the better option is to diversify forces just enough to offset that problem in economy. Breakers are a good option. At 215g and 30w with 610 hp (?) and feedback damage, they're good meat and globally great against heroes in depleting mana. That 24 control in Rifles puts you in low upkeep and slows your income anyway. I say 6 as a lategame finisher anyway. I usually only use 4 most of the game if I use them at all. This leaves me room for Breakers, Casters, and any auxiliary units I need without taking me into high upkeep.

That's just my take on it. I understand where you're coming from on massing Rifles and combining that with Bolt - I just wanted to make sure I was clear on my reasoning for why I do it differently. If it doesn't help you, then no harm or foul. My feelings aren't hurt. But if it does help you, then I've done my part. :)

Good luck with your games!

-Proz

[Aqo]

Nah, I see what you mean. It's true from what I experienced that, rifles die real fast as opposed to my enemy's units, and I have to replace them quickly, which isn't very cost effective. That's why I always get a paladin, heal and armor are just so amazing when using rifles.

But after going over everything you said, I think that one thing that helps this work is that when I get rifles, I can always expand and my opponent has no way of stopping me; air units and artillery fail hard against rifles, he can't risk harassing with a lone hero, and moving his entire force in to my expo means I can go to his main and pick off his buildings real fast with my high damage rating. So basically, with an aggressive playstyle and fast expanding, two things that I got used to from playing Starcraft, I think rifles work real good for me as long as I avoid fighting his main force.

I'd use spell breakers more like you say, but my problem is that the damage they deal is reeeeally small, and I just can't stand slow battles :/
Aren't there any high-damage high-hp units for the humans? Mortars come to mind but I'm not sure about their hitpoints.

Anyway, if you're saying rifles aren't worth getting in large numbers because the enemy can just focus fire and kill them quickly, I think the same could be said for small numbers of rifles like 4-6, so if that is true you might as well not get them /at all/. I talked to some TFT players and they said that human should just tower rush D: blah?

[Prozerran]

No, Human can get away with Rifles early on and see some success. You'll get more hero kills/TPs through MK Bolt + footmen surrounds, but w/e.

I'll type up more later. My wife just learned that she passed the Bar and is now officially an Attorney. We're off to celebrate in about half an hour, but I'll dig up some genuine replays (not tower rush noob garbage) and post them in an edit later.

-Proz

[GroG]

Breakers are nice because they are magic immune, they are fast, and when they deal damage to units with MP (such as Bears, Heroes, casters) they not only steal MP but also do extra damage, like mini little mana burns. They also have a bit of range with their attack, so they can dance a bit somewhat like huntresses, and since you have priests, while you dance them the priests can heal them and they go back in to battle really quick.

The sucky thing about riflemen is that when they get surrounded, they get owned (pretty much like all ranged) - they need good position. If your opponent gets high level heroes or high tech, you either need to force battles or your opponent can whittle away at them with hit and runs. MK can fix this a bit by stormbolting something, giving you a unit for trade, but he has low speed, has low MP, and is hard to micro since he's so small.

You talk about expanding and your opponent can't stop you, you need to play some high level players. Basically your expansions are much, much slower than standard if you open with rifles because your wood is low until tier 2. If you watch any replays a lot of humans expand tier 1, which your wood consumption won't allow you to do unless you really, really stall your tech to tier 2. Also rifles builds are extremely susceptible to harass since they aren't anywhere near as mobile as footman builds and you don't have the wood for towers like you would otherwise to protect your main/expo(s).

And your point about air units sucking against rifles: If your opponent is using air units to directly attack your mass rifle instead of harassing you, you are probably playing someone that's not good.

Now, I'm not saying rifle build sucks, but it has it's trade offs like other builds in the game. But I highly suggest you keep laddering and you'll start to see strengths and weaknesses once you play high level people.

[GenocideAlive]

Rifles are ass units to start. While you are sitting at your base trying to chug out rifles, I'm getting my hero to L3. I will slam it to L3 uber fast, and arrive in your base with my L3 spell -- be it wolves, WE, deathcoil, etc etc. At that point you're going to have to turtle FURTHER just to survive. I'm going to add a second hero and get more advanced units. You can match that while you're in your base, but considering you start with the slower rifles, unless I get an off unit too (hunts, fiends, etc.) I'm probably going to be ahead of you in tech.

So the rule is, if you're going to go for the off-unit (Rifle, Fiend, Huntress, Headhunter), you need to have some advantage from doing so. UD can use an Orb of Corruption on a Lich + Nuke + fiend FF and it drops stuff like a bad habit. The thing is, you use it on regular units. Focusing heroes is a very risky strategy that often backfires when they load up their heroes. Pot of Invul, Pot of Health, and Staff on other hero tend to neutralize your focus-fire. This will give you fits.

Not to mention that if your opponent picks a AoE hero, rifles get HOSED.

[GroG]

I can't imagine you'd be super far behind with rifles if you went a fast creeping hero, but MK+rifles isn't the greatest since you can't surround after the bolt like you can with footies and he's not a fast creeper so basically your options aren't that great. But DR/rifle or AM/rifle wouldn't be that much slower than footies at creeping, especially since you can militia anyways if you need to.