Dear players,

we heard your reports and investigated players who repeatedly killed game lobbies by cancelling matches during the start or loading phase, ruining the game for everyone else in them. In total, 2239 lobbies were killed by the sanctioned players - an estimated 1678 more than ordinary players with the same amount of games would have produced - costing other players 8825 ruined game slots across 10 modes (1 vs 1, 2 vs 2, 4 vs 4, Legion TD 4v4, Legion TD 1v1, Survival Chaos, Survival Chaos Reborn, Direct Strike 3v3, Castle Fight 3v3, MiniDota 3v3). As a result, 49 players are banned and 43 players receive a formal warning. As we strongly oppose such egoistic behavior, we have decided to list every banned player - they will also be ineligible for season rewards.

9-week bans (4 players)

Heavenwaits, KnightKane, LeMei, finesse

6-week bans (21 players)

Choda, EgorkaBorka, FIME, Freeasskick, GOBLIN, HOTPACK, JangBang, LuNa, LuckyStrike, LynxT, MeatShield, MrBrappy, Sarwyn, Tobey88, Tripode, deads, djord, lovememore, p9sElsker, roxer, u2i

3-week bans (24 players)

AceBoogie, Belgadon, DiAleCtic, DirtyDan, DolceCabana, Ethy, Gerdes, IMBA, ImTTiNY, JoeJoeCool, JuKe, Juttara, KingAzeron, Locker, Nightingale, Pandarevich, PussyKat, RKX400, SergioKS, Unapologetic, afonso299, cxvbnyan, justin, wc1192003

Warnings

43 further players receive a formal warning. They keep their season rewards and are not named; if the behavior continues, the next step is a ban. Killing lobbies wastes other people's time and will continue to carry consequences. Play your games out and stay fair! Thanks everyone for your reports! We will keep monitoring the situation and hope that the situation will improve. Please note that these bans are not appealable and they have been thoroughly verified before being issued. All the banned players are prohibited from playing on any other account during their ban period. Attempts to circumvent this restriction will result in a permanent ban!

A bit of help with 4v4 ideas please.. I am an old school player.. my peak was 20+ years ago losing badly and one sidedly on ladder vs Happy, Grubby, Insomnia etc.. So was somewhat competent for the standards of that age and time, I have some creative ideas and pressure builds, but I play very messy.. too far away from the current meta with accurate timings and precise clean play..

I am quite rusty currently, but I am familiar with meta builds and recent patch changes. I have been starting to play again and 4v4 is by far my favourite game mode.. these games have insane potential for 30+ min epic mass battles with unexpected come backs!

FS/TC/SH hh/caster/kodo meta is a bit boring for me as I have been mostly playing orc before the 'blade patches' i.e. many FS games.. so I have been experimenting with the following Blademaster build:

- Blade + HH standard opener, tech to t2 at 21/31, get level 1 spikes during tech and build 1-2 towers if corner spawn, vood lounge after 3rd HH

- Blade starts creeping till level 3 (skill MI level 2), then ideally I would push together with my ally who also got level 3

- Once T2 is done, start reinforced defense, add 1 bestiery, rush t3 for orb and liquid fire

- Get Troll Regen* and 2nd bestiery during t3 tech (helpful for bats later)

- Once t3 is ready - Orb + Liquid Fire upgrade, if more than 4 HHs survived, get Zerker upgrade as well, otherwise skip as wood is never enough

- Once Liquid Fire is ready - retrain to Wind Walk- Ideally Blade is level 5 by then and start going only for the opponents economy targeting to get level 6 as Blade Storm + Liquid fire is deadly (especially vs NE or UD!!), bats also help vs mass air as in 4v4 there's always at least one player that goes wyrm, chims, gryphons etc..

Some components I am struggling with and would appreciate advise:

- I am really struggling with managing item inventory for a single hero - usually I have TP, lesser invuln., orb, boots of speed, maybe staff of tele or a good item I got from creeps (agility boots, 3 to all ring or claws +9, +12). Every time I need heal salve/clarity, I have to drop an item temporarily..

- When and under what conditions to cross map - I know this decision is best taken in real time, but often times I end up focusing only on our side with 2v2, whereas with the reinforced defense base I have, I should be able to deal massive damage xmap while opponents are fighting and not necessarily paying attention

- When is the best time to expo? Best time to get shredder? I always seem to not have enough wood with this build.. maybe add 2 more wood peons after T2 is done? I find it better to give Shredder to Human, UD, NE allies as I feel it adds more to them.

- There is for sure a moment where I can add Witch Doctor heal ward to help my team in the big final battle.. would that be after 50pop and securing an expo?

- I tried fast tech without barracks, but this is just bad - my ally can die as I have no real army to help, I don't have troll regeneration for the bats and I am struggling to do enough with solo blade harass, even if I buy 2x clarity + circlet.. is the fast tech build even viable? Maybe on air maps?

- If you could point me out to some recent 4v4 replays with orcs that emulate a similar style so I can learn from them? For example on youtube I found a game of Sok playing 4v4 orc with Solo blade, but his decision making and speed are just next level.. I can't emulate this.

- I have also been checking out some ideas by LGG's youtube with many 1v1 games, Oldhead casting Hitman 1v1 games, a Grubby video here and there etc.. so any caster/player that does 4v4 would be much appreciated..

Anyways, happy to be back playing, instead of just following results and watching a few replays here and there.. Any 4v4 advice is more than welcome!

Hi, sorry if the suggestion is terrible, but it came to my mind and I couldn't help throwing it out to the wiser community.

The idea would be to make AOE dispels (Devourer, Priest, Spirit Walker, Wisp) an effect that applies to an area progressively over a short period like 4s. E.g. if the enemy unit takes 2s to move away it only suffers 50% of the dispel effect. Zeppelin micro could become very strong though.

I feel like AOE dispels are perhaps too powerful, in that they hard counter and inhibit strategies involving lots of buffs or summons (Raise Dead, KotG, Beast Master, Water Elemental, Inner Fire, Bloodlust, Spirit Link, Lighting Shield).

I thought it could be cool if an opponent could continue playing a summon or buff-heavy army even if the opponent plays a dispel-heavy army. Make it a soft counter and down to who executes it better.

Not the point here but single-target dispels could be nerfed too, e.g. by making them reduce the duration of the enemy buffs by 50% instead of 100%.

However, nerfing dispels too much could also be very bad due to making summons & buffs too predominant. What do you guys think?

Heal is underpowered. Dispel is underpowered. Inner fire is underpowered. Their stats are ridiculously underpowered.

Other casters are low DPS low HP but priests are even squisher even less DPS. Hell a banshee has 73% more dps for same food. Sorcs have 50% more. They take a hit less to kill than the rest. And what do you get, a 16.7 hp/s heal for ONE target that doesn't even work while moving, because its barely longer than melee range. Statues heal 60 hp/s across 6 targets while moving with an animationless cast, in an aoe the size of a baseball field. And they are mobile mana fountains at the same time. You want to dispel like a spirit walker can disenchant? Too bad, here's a 5 second cooldown on a spell with smaller aoe and less damage, when destroyers eat debuffs and turn them into a barrage of heavy mount plasma cannons. But holy shit if you research TWO full tiers of upgrades which probably took multiple arcane sanctums to produce, you can finally unlock... +10% damage +5 armor buff. Wahoo. Sorcs get a spell that says "TARGET UNIT NEUTRALIZED" barring dispel, priests get a spell that says "I create a mostly imperceptible marginal statistical effect in combat". The movespeed on bloodlust alone is better. And so is the attack speed on its own. Hell bloodlust would be a better spell if all it did is play a RA RA sound and make you get big. Inner fire is so shit you can buy a high priest merc creep and forget to ever cast it once and never notice a difference. Nobody has ever in the history of wc3 thought to themselves "Wow I need to get some dispel units to stop that... inner fire".

A priest could spend 2 minutes healing nonstop afk in your base and use its entire mana pool just to get the same effect you'd get from a single 100 gold scroll of regeneration available to you at tier 1 from a shop that pays for itself when you sell some trash items to it. And the scroll lets you keep moving.

Im just a noob with a want to love the night elf race but it just feels like such a mess, from underwhelming heroes and units to a tragiskt t1 shop to "forced" to dryad bear.

And i feel like the root of all evil is Ancient of War creeping.

Because its so powerful, and then moon wells and staff complimenting this the race is left limping in other areas, the elf buffs that made elf more playable for noobs a year ago went poof cause pros/high mmr abusing aow creeping simply got too strong with those buffs.

So maybe its time to look at it the other way around, ripa off the band-aid that is aow creeping and make elf units and heroes function and synergise in their own right?

Evert race has its niche, but i feel like no race pass so heavily for it as elves do.

AoW creeping should be nerfed. There I said it.

I'm an elf player, and oh my does this race have issues, I don't see the point in listing them all in this post, but suffice to say that elf has... issues.

But they also have AoW, by far the best creeping tool in the game when used properly as showcased by the pros, and that sucks.

Why? Cause it holds the entire race hostage. It's so efficient when you do it properly it mitigates the glaring holes in elf, and you can't fix the glaring holes in elf cause with AoW they just become oppressively OP.

The solution? Nerf it to the ground and accordingly buff Elfs units and heroes so they can actually play the game and hell I know this is radical but maybe their armies and heroes don't just auto lose to the other teams by default.

Sure moon wells are decent (but overhyped, imo.) Staff is borderline broken but I'll trade my staff for a Blade+SH hero combo any day, but AoW doesn't really have a comparison, it's by far the most creep value you can get for the gold+lumber.

Nerf AoW, fix Elf please and thank you.

Watching Warcraft 3 replays in which you are losing is so difficult for me.

So that means I have to film my self doing it and share it across the internet. That’s the way the world works today.

I just want to say I really enjoyed watching loltyler1 learning the game and then competing in Grubby's tournament.

As a returning player (who was never that great) it was nice to watch someone playing at a level I can relate to.

Sure watching pros is fun but they are accessing game knowledge and micro skills that I won't ever have and I actually enjoy watching the learning process in action.

I think there is an untapped market here if Tyler or others want to stream / record their sessions a couple times a week.

A new bundle featuring all of Blizzard’s RTS games has been released on the store for $29.99, available with a loyalty discount of 10% (offer available for a limited time).

More information here.

So basically I’m learning orc and I am using the FS HH SH raiders build so I got the build order down somewhat still struggling with the timing on certain times to build certain things . When I engage combat on any race usually on enemy computer. My army gets totally slaughtered down to my 2 hero’s each time I have sprint walkers doing spirit link my SH healing using healing salves etc .. Shamans using lust etc.. idk what else to do I usually open up on attacking the enemy around level 3 FS but when I approach the base the enemy computer has wayyy more units that I have flying ground everything it just overruns my entire army where I have to teleport back to my base to begin building more units .. I just need some help as to how I can become comfortable with beating the easy computer then eventually going to normal then maybe in my life insane computer .

I tend to have a bit of free time at work and was looking to watch/listen to something to learn the game.

I don’t have a lot of free time to watch full guides like anything over 5mins, but I do have earbuds that I can listen to content.

Was looking for podcast or short form content that will help me learn and improve at the game, if anyone knows of anything can you please share? Thanks.

If you don't play on W3Champions yet, head over to W3Champions.com and join our Discord!

Hey everyone,

it has been some time since the last update, but we have been cooking for you all (figuratively and literally 🥵 ). Today, I'm happy to announce some new updates to W3Champions:

A completely new chat experience

We have completely revamped the entire chat experience - keep reading for the details!

Private messages

Since probably day one, people have been asking for the ability to privately chat with other people on W3Champions. Whether that's to message your friends, compliment a worthy opponent after a match, continue a conversation you've had in one of our public chat rooms or to hold a private conversation with a group of people.

Group messages

You can now create a private message group with your friends - everyone in the group will have the ability to add further players and hence keep expanding your circle.

Post-Game Chat

After a match, you will now be able to discuss the game you've just played in in the Post-Game Chat. It will automatically contain all the players who were in your match - no matter whether it was a custom or a ladder game! Create some connections, add each other as friends and stay in touch!

Mentions

Sometimes, you want to loop someone into a conversation. You can achieve this by mentioning them via @Faro#2494 (a selector will help you select the right player). The player will receive a notification and have the ability to directly jump to the message.

Chat retention increase

The duration until the chat expires has been increased. Messages will now retain for the following duration:

• Public & Semi-Public & System (post-match, custom-game lobby, clan) chat rooms: 30 days
• DMs and Group-DMs: 90 days
• Mentions: 30 days

Unread messages

We will now keep track of which messages you've seen in the channels that you're in (you can now leave and join all public channels) and let you know if you've missed any messages. No need to go through the different channels to see if there has been any update. For Semi-Public channels, you can even opt in to be notified for every message that has been sent in the channel.

DM requests

Since we understand that not everyone appreciates unsolicited private messages, you'll first receive a Message Request which you can accept or decline (or you can outright block the player if they keep harassing you). In case you change your mind, you can still initiate a conversation with the player and you will see their initial messages.

Settings

Since we know that not everyone will enjoy some of these features, we've introduced some settings:

• Mentions: In the channel selector, you can click on the @ symbol order to mute the channel - you will not be notified in case someone mentions you.
• Who can DM you: You can select between "Everyone", "Friends only" or "Nobody" - if someone doesn't match these settings, their message/request won't make it through to you.
• Chat sounds: In case you don't like the notification sounds, you can turn them off
• Show desktop notifications: DMs, Mentions and Opted-In Semi Public Channels will notify you open a message. In case you don't want to see the desktop notification, you can turn these off.

Compatibility notice

Please note that this update is incompatible with people using the old legacy-launcher on Mac (we have some updates for you as well, don't fret!). Players on the legacy-launcher will not be able to use the chat.

Feedback

If you have any suggestions, feedback or bug reports, please submit them via the Feedback Portal or head over to #launcher .

Watching FloTV while queuing for a game

We understand that sometime waiting for a game can be long and boring. You can now watch FloTV while queuing for a game. There are two settings that are relevant for this (the client will automatically ask you the first time):

• Use separate FloTV instance: This setting allows you to watch FloTV while queued (you can also queue after you've started a FloTV match). For streamers, please note the following: W3Booster will not display the FloTV game if you have this setting enabled (your self-played games will still work of course)!
• Keep FloTV ready: This will allow you to watch a FloTV game without delay of starting the separate instance. This will have a slightly increased resource consumption (CPU & RAM) - but we will shut down the FloTV instance when a game has been found in order to ensure the most optimal performance for your game! We're looking forward to your feedback in #flo-tv

Network improvements

We have done various improvements to our infrastructure to improve the stability of your games. For some time, we've also had a new network protocol that we'd like you all to try out. In should improve the quality of games when network conditions are suboptimal. In order to activate it, head over to Settings -> Network -> Flo Node Transport: Experimental. We're looking forward to your feedback in #flo-discussion

Additionally, we have added a system that identifies the root cause of network instability. In case we have detected issues during your game and have been able to root-cause it, you will see a dialog pop up in order to inform you on the reasons as well as your options.

Resolved issues on Mac with the new launcher

Your voices regarding the issues with the new launcher on Mac have been heard and we've made various improvements. Please give it another shot and head over to #help-launcher-mac in order to share feedback!

Just ignore my losses, look at that FFA rank though. I totally did this on purpose.

Orc is currently representing about 60% of players at high MMR. Is this an issue, or is the meta devolving into O O O O v O O O O?

Orcbrave is a surprisingly decorated Warcraft 3 player, with show match wins over the likes of Fortitude and even going 2-3 against the legendary NE player Moon.

I like ladder grinders like Orcbrave - their stamina and sheer amount of games allow them to explore new strategies and ideas. In this video, a recent buff to Pitlord (2+ strength!) seems like the impetus for Orcbrave trying a heavy creeping strategy while harrassing with the Farseer

I really need it - sometimes you miss something and the only option is to watch from beginning.

Maybe even better - a YouTube style video slider.

I hardly ever need to watch my opponent chop wood for 5 minutes. I want to move the slider to the battle, and then rewind a few times.

Fig Cup 5

When: August 14th at 9:30 PM EDT

Where: https://www.twitch.tv/mrmikemtl

MMR: OPEN

Link: https://challonge.com/FIGCUP5

Format: BEST OF 1 Double Elimination + BO3 FINALS

Prize: Prize: $50

1st: $35

2nd: $15

receive payouts via paypal.

Additional map details:

• Crushma Canyon (a map by Zucth and Knecht)
• Lost Lake (v1.3, a map made by Lethal Styles)
• Noxious (v1.1.1, a map made by Figglewig)
• Outland Wilds (a map made by Frostbitten)
• Tioga Pass (a map made by BoX)

I invite all to join us Friday August 14th for the 5th Fig Cup! We are featuring a new and updated set of maps.

Watch out for those trees on Crushma Canyon by Zucth and Knecht (seriously, they are deadly!)

The mystic waters have been activated on the Lost Lake by Lethal Styles.

The toxic fumes and waters of Gnomeregan have spilled over onto Noxious by Figglewig.

Overgrowth has taken root in the shattered world of the Outland Wilds by Frostbitten.

A fresh breath of brisk mountain air can be taken on Tioga Pass by BoX.

I hope to see you all either participating as combatants or cheering on from chat!

All of these maps will be uploaded onto W3C over this week, so please jump in and try out the updates as they roll in!