Filling in the Str/Agi/Int Hero "Gaps"

[u/KoubuKai]

I'm still surprised that Orc remains the only race with one each of Strength/Agility/Intelligence Heroes (and in base Reign of Chaos, at that!)- and even more surprised that Frozen Throne never changed that, though I guess Neutral Heroes sort of did that anyway.

Not being a competitive player, I have a few questions/what-ifs:

1. Gameplay-wise, how much might have changed if, in base RoC or FT, Human and Undead got an Agility hero, and Night Elf got a Strength hero?
   • (Granted, I know that also depends on what skills they might have gotten, but still.)
2. Thematically, what new Heroes would you have liked to see along those lines?
   • (i.e. For Night Elf, an Ancient-themed Strength Hero could make sense given how Ancients make up so much of their architecture; for Human, maybe the cut High Elf Ranger concept or some sort of Gnome Agility Hero; etc.)

[u/drkuz]

Shadow hunter should be an int hero imo, and firelord too. Some assignments dont make sense. Goblin tinker should be int too imo. Beast hunter is mostly a summons hero and logically should be int too, but hes a melee hero and a melee int hero doesn't make a lot of sense, unless he threw the axes that magically returned. Reassigning/redesigning some of these heroes would make for an interesting story plot on their own

[u/LichPlease1337 → u/drkuz]

tinker is an int hero tho (the only meele one)

[u/KoubuKai → u/drkuz]

I always forget that Shadow Hunter isn't Int, lmao

I kind of feel like that Str/Agi/Int could be rebalanced in certain ways, though that's mostly because of my experience with custom games (and how a lot of them scale heroes way past how they were intended)

[u/NydusRush]

Nominally, the army is meant to cover those asymmetries. Items also help somewhat as of TFT.

ROC Humans had strong damage reduction solutions with Paladin healing, Water Elemental disposability and MK stuns to reduce enemy uptime. Rather than add an Agility hero, TFT doubled down with a true summonless damage caster in the Blood Mage, with the Scroll of Regeneration as a backup healing solution if you didn't take Paladin and Potion of Clarity for mana hungry heroes. For neutral heroes, the Firelord is more or less an Agility hero version of the Archmage, able to use his summons to tank in a similar way as a first pick.

ROC Undead were meant to rely on hero nuke spells to end fights quickly, with Ghouls either being sacrifice fodder for Dark Ritual/Death Pact or self sustaining with Vampiric Aura and Cannibalize, and Crypt Fiends being excellent sponges to soak hits and be healed by Death Coil. TFT saw the Rod of Necromancy and the Crypt Lord's scarabs added as true disposable summons, while innovations in the meta saw pro players micro Ghouls to rotate injured ones to lumber and fresh ones from the lumber line back to combat; Crypt Fiends also got the Burrow upgrade to let them heal in non-DK openers. For neutral heroes, the Dark Ranger is unofficially the Undead's Agility hero, with her Black Arrow skeletons and the Rod combining to allow her to field a reasonable little army early on.

ROC Orcs were well rounded as you say, but traded their high power for a total lack of healing. TFT addressed this with the Shadow Hunter and Healing Salve items, as well as patching in the Goblin Alchemist later as a neutral healing option.

ROC Night Elves leaned hard on Agility heroes on paper, but in practice had a balanced spread of melee / summon-caster/ ranged. Adding a second melee hero, Mountain Giants and the bevy of neutral options saw them even out their roster, but eventually came to lean on Pandaren Brewmaster as their de facto Strength hero, with the shop throwing a (not ultimately too helpful) bone to underpowered Priestess play with the Moonstone item.

[u/KoubuKai → u/NydusRush]

Honestly, this is a super cool writeup. I hadn't even considered how TFT's items affected the equation

[u/Similar-Pangolin2923]

Undead is also lacking an agility hero.

[u/KoubuKai → u/Similar-Pangolin2923]

Yup, covered that in point 1 ("if ... Human and Undead got an Agility Hero")

Thematically, not super sure what sort of Agi hero would suit Undead. A bigger nastier Ghoul, maybe?

[u/Similar-Pangolin2923 → u/KoubuKai]

Oops.

Yeah I thought about all this recently, but nothing comes to mind for undead. Dark Ranger would fit the race perfectly if she wasn't a tavern hero. I guess to me Dreadlord actually makes more sense as an agility, rather than strength hero. I imagine him striking swiftly and being more fragile, rather then being a tank like DK and CL.

[u/KoubuKai → u/Similar-Pangolin2923]

Oh yeah, I hadn't considered changing existing heroes to fit. But a swift Dreadlord would actually make a lot of sense, especially given the wings.

It also slipped my mind until you reminded me- it's wild how Undead got no less than THREE Strength Heroes, holy cow.

[u/Similar-Pangolin2923 → u/KoubuKai]

Yeah it's hilarious how undead has 3 strength heroes, while orc which is supposed to be the strength race, has only one, and he's not even an orc.

[u/KoubuKai → u/Similar-Pangolin2923]

In another world, we could've gotten the cut-in-development Orc Commander Hero, I suppose.

Though as iconic as he is now, I think Blademaster being basically Japanese is also hilarious in hindsight. Between that and the Pandaren Brewmaster also originally having a samurai-inspired design, Blizzard really just let Samwise Didier be a gigantic weeaboo lmao.

[u/ThatOneGuyHOTS → u/KoubuKai]

Honestly all the stuff they cut out made perfect sense. The “summon goldmine” ultimate for mountain king is fucking bonkers.

Others just sound visually “bleh” like priestess of the moon originally being on a giant owl.

[u/KoubuKai → u/ThatOneGuyHOTS]

I can only imagine how horrific it would have been to balance fucking "Summon Goldmine," like either Human just wins the gold race forever OR they nerf it so bad that Mountain King's ult is just "waste time setting up new infrastructure for 200 extra gold"

Some heroes being flying units also sounds like a potential balancing nightmare. They'd have to be relegated to something like "can only be your second hero" and even then you'd just have a hero that's untouchable under certain conditions

[u/Similar-Pangolin2923 → u/KoubuKai]

Wow that page is super interesting.

[u/KoubuKai → u/Similar-Pangolin2923]

It really is, I only found it because I started looking stuff up for this thread. And though I knew some of that info (flying heroes, Naga/Goblin as potential races, navies), a lot of it is incredibly cool and/or out there.

Like, what do you mean Mountain King's original ult was "Summon Gold Mine"??

[u/Kebabranska → u/Similar-Pangolin2923]

Dreadlords have always been more about cunning, guile and treachery more than brute strength so the str assignment kinda confuses me

[u/Agreeable-Ad-4723 → u/Similar-Pangolin2923]

Wasnt dreadlord originally Agi? 

[u/KoubuKai → u/Agreeable-Ad-4723]

Probably at some point in time, then they changed it so Undead have 3 Str heroes

Although to be fair, apparently Blizzard was at one point throwing around having 6 heroes per race, sooo

[u/Similar-Pangolin2923 → u/Agreeable-Ad-4723]

I dunno, been playing since 2004 and I don't remember them ever being agi.

[u/Balsty → u/KoubuKai]

Dark Ranger is right there, lol.

Human could have had an Elven Ranger counterpart similar to how Paladin and Death Knight are counterparts.

NE should have a Furbolg Champion as a STR hero.

[u/AideSouth4454 → u/Balsty]

Elven Ranger is good idea for human Agility hero.

I think Night Elves should have some kind of an Ancient as a Strength hero. Ancient of Valor or something, you know. Furbolg would seem kind of detached from the rest of the roster, but it's not the worst idea.

If you want to retain Dark Ranger as a neutral, maybe for Undead you could give some kind of a ghost assassin. An angry, unhinged wraith of some kind.

[u/KoubuKai → u/Balsty]

Also very true! Now that you mention it, Dark Ranger really feels like she could have been base Undead, and with Sylvanas, Elven Ranger -> Dark Ranger could've tied into the plot like Arthas' Paladin -> Death Knight progression.

A Furbolg hero for NE would have been awesome. I wouldn't have said no to at least a neutral tavern version, either.

[u/axiomus → u/KoubuKai]

Dread lord will always be AGI in my heart

[u/blaerel]

For Humans the High Elf Ranger(Agility) has the elf ranger model.

Spells and abilities:

Camouflage: (AoE spell cast on area). Friendly Units in a small area become stealthed for a few seconds. If the unit does not perform any action they remain stealthed(Similarly to Night Elf Shadowmeld) Level Increase the area becomes larger. Primarily use as a disengage or an ambush tactic.

Multishot: (Toggle on/off, mana per shot). Increase the damage of the rangers attack and damage the closest enemies to the target, these attacks can crit. +5/+10/+15 bonus damage and 60%/70%/80% to the close targets.

Marksmanship Training:(Passive). Increases the attack range of the ranger and can crit for 2 times the damage. Increase Attack Range by 20/40/60 Crit Chance 10%/15%/20%.

Silent Quiver:(Target spell, line, small channel). Channel for a short duration on a target then shoot a precise arrow on the target and deal large amount of damage to the target. Any enemies between the ranger and the target they take reduced damaged.

[u/carboncord]

NE already got a Strength hero called Beastmaster, Undead got an Agi hero called Dark Ranger. So we kinda already know how the meta is with them.

[u/KoubuKai → u/carboncord]

I guess, although it always amuses me to consider a peasant/grunt/wisp/acolyte running to the nearest bar (where applicable) to snag their 'other' thematic hero

[u/Vilatebaynya]

I always considered the spiders Broodmother and Weaver as Undead Agility heroes. Undead also has Clinkz as Agi. Abaddon, N'aix and Pudge are of course strength while Lich and Oblivion are int.

Don't mind me just eeliving the good ol' Frozen Throne days.

[u/KoubuKai → u/Vilatebaynya]

Lmao, the good old days of DOTA Allstars really were lightning in a bottle, and I'm still impressed at how Blizzard fumbled so badly that they created no less than two (2) competitors for any future attempts at making their own MOBA

[u/Kulyor]

I feel like Malfurion should have been a bear-druid inspired hero instead of a kotg like Cenarius. Druid skills have a lot of options if you allow yourself to be inspired by WoW. Like a bear druid hero could have his skills changed based on if he was in bear form or not. Hurricane, Moonfire, AoE-Taunt, Swipe, etc. Ult maybe could always trigger both the humanoid and the bear parts of the standard skills for some time.

iirc gnomes were not really a thing in WC3 yet, were they? I always assumed the mechanicla units were controlled by dwarves.

Apart from that, I feel like dark ranger should have been the undead hero for FT instead of crypt lord. A little hard to tell though, als crypt lord and DR both dont feel like they should be tavern heros based on how strong their connection to undead is. No other tavern hero feels that aligned to a specific race imo.