I felt like you missed an interesting point about wisps in that their lumber gathering is so unique and cool - they don't cut trees, instead they just circle around it and produce lumber from a distance without needing to return to base. This makes it so a worker of yours can passively scout or await to make an expansion while still producing resources. Moreover when a wisp makes a building he turns into that building, consuming the wisp. Overall one of the most unique, clever and flavourful designs in the history of RTSes.
Thankfully they aren't consumed on non-ancients, I always thought it was cool how it felt like that little wisp is now in control of this massive powerful ancient.
@@Meitti First of all, probabbly werent as many priest cause many died to the attack to antonidas city (i dont remember the name) and also when Archimonde spawn he destroy everything around him instantly
@@sh1nebGrubby won’t go this way, he still wants to have friends. But if you ask me…Currently: Tier S - The Emperor, Tier A - Lyn, Tier B - Moon, Focus, Ee0. Tier C - The rest? 😅
What that tier distribution tells me is that Night Elf units exist to support the backbone of the Night Elf army: Archers, Dryads and Bears. It helps that at the highest level massable bread and butter ranged units are some of the most microable units in the game, just look at Marines in Starcraft. All that and the general hero power level of Night Elves tells me that the real S++ tier unit in Night Elf is the Moon Well.
Yeah moon wells are good until the sun rises and you have 0 moonjuice for the next 5 mins. Meanwhile orc pops 3 salves to heal 1200. And UD has a mobile mana+hp fountain.
@@Gaze73ehh salves require buying and slots. UD healing comes late (relatively). Elf you're buying moonwells from minute 0 just for supply. Also you can't bank moonwell energy in daytime, but you don't lose it if you don't use it. I think moonwells are insane because they're in your base so they synergize stupidly well with scroll of town portal. You can engage and burn enemy HP/mana, scroll back home where your moonwells are waiting and then book it straight back to the enemy.
21:35 Bear is probably S due to the built-in healing ability equal to a few moon wells. One of the reason I’ve started to play them back in 2003 when I was introduced to them by one of my buddies. Who wants taurens when there are bears 😅 This is probably one of the most favorite units for many folks out there.
@@pablocortinas360 Immune to magic, I am not sure about that. Just wait when a night elf of Happy’s micro control will be born, but yes, I can see in most people’ hands it’s tier A.
Bears are the most squishy heavy armor frontliners. They die extremely quickly and you really need double staff to justify massing them. Also don't forget they require tier 3 with masters training researched.Not even mentioning you can dispel their buffs. Those are big downsides. A is justified.
I remember doing the NElf first campaign mission. I simply couldn't do it. I was maxing my population with archers and was attacking, but a Divine Shield by the Paladin and he was destroying my army faster than I could destroy him. Of course, I wasn't really microing my army properly. But, when I put an Ancient of War in front of my archers, the mission suddenly became possible.
The level 7 Paladin casually reviving two armies was definetly not a fun experience the first time. Especially if you messed up your first attack and lost the Fulborgs
That Paladin with his devotion aura turned those footmen and Grunts so durable vs my no-micro noob ass that i built and uprooted a bunch of ancients with an Archer backline. Years later, i felt like a complete moron when i finally realized that kiting is a thing.
I know i'm late to the party, but how you do it is to fill the choke point with archers during night, and make them go Meld. Or, surround and Meld. Boom. You now invented sentry's force fields from SC.
What the race lacks in flexibility, they make up for it with strength of their staple units. Archers are arguably the most versatile out of all tier 1 units due to having a range attack. Dryads can very quickly take the map control until the opponent have the critical mass to fight back which take a while. Bears are arguably the best tier 3 melee unit, capable to even win against knights with correct usage of rejuvs There is also orb of venom, wisp detonates, and staff of preservation
Context is still important. heroes are strong, can utilize the tavern revival due to moonwells, tavern heroes are useful, zeppellin is useful, wisps are S tier, buildings fight and move, unique staff and orb, so NE stands on a hundred different legs unlike UD for example
I think Night Elf units are balanced around the fact that they have Moon Wells. Because Night Elves have such a safety net and the ability to so freely recover at home, their units are balanced to be a little worse. Whereas Humans, in contrast, have useless Farms, so their recovery comes baked into their units.
mmmm... what happened is that they were the first race that blizzard made. they were the "good guys" and got too many goodies. so they had some things baked in that were inherently broken and has since made them difficult to balance without extreme revisions. back in the day, ancients could attack when producing, for example. hunts simply do too much for a tier one unit--they're the fastest melee, they have aoe, etc., etc.
Glove Thrower's art design is incredible now that I think about it, it's such a great way to make a catapult look so much more sophisticated for elves in a high fantasy setting
I played NE since the very begining, fell in love with the aesthetics, and also felt the same way about their heroes and units, all felt kinda weak. But somehow NE manages to win games.
When i was a kid i loved elfs cuz of cool bears, attractive archers and dryads, now that i am a little older, i love elfs because they have cool, strong bears, attractive archers and dryads...and fun heroes, not a lot has changed 😅
peasant,wisp, ghoul, acolyte, peon. Being able to creep with peasants and power build is part of what makes Human viable. Wisp is vital, and crafty, good scout, good movement speed, can deny exp. Best worker scout in game. Ghoul great being able to creep then return to harvest lumber while recovering, but because its the defaul melee unit, maybe a double edged sword. acolytes better fighters than peons, more hp, and recover on blight. Peons just suck, ad their "strength" in burrows, is simulateously an achilles heel, for if taken out, orc can outright lose the match immediatly. peons repair burrows too slowly for them to be higher on this list, and burrows range really not long enough to be actually deadly, just a deterrence.
My favorite thing about the wisp is harvesting lumber doesn't harm the trees. It doesn't matter much at all for balance, but I love how thematic it is.
I think you forgot one thing about Dryads that I hate: They are so hard to heal. No Rejuvenation because they are magic immune and they waste so much of a Moon Well because of their Mana Pool. How many times was I unable to heal all my units because the Dryads wasted too much and I lazily just sent everyone to the Moon Wells with one click.
Wisp, peasant, acolyte, peon. Wisps just so versatile and a bit cheaper, they carry Night Elf. Best expansion, can creep with ancient of war or tree of life. Hard to raid with good sim city, can avoid skill shots and can even threaten tower pushes.
@@markvanderwerf8592 I dunno, I think peasants also carry human with power building and militia creeping. Not sure aow should be included in the equation either, as we'd have to include every building from all races, like the arcane tower and stuff. Also, wisps get consumed upon building, which, while not the end of the world, shouldn't be ignored.
Worker units have 3 unique traits in all 4 classes, I like that. Wisps can Detonate, collect Lumber passively, and consume itself to build. Acolytes can become a Shade for vision, do not have to be occupied to build, and can destroy their own buildings for resources. Peons are safe inside their buildings during construction, use a burrow to defend their base, and can learn Pillage. Humans can build together fast, become a Militia which is not a joke, and can learn Advanced Lumber Harvesting. Some traits are more useful than others, but there are exactly 3 unique traits in each worker. I really like that lol
@@SyRose901note: Acolytes don't move around while harvesting (which means they're more vulnerable to Flame Strike and Blizzard and such) and they can't go in Goldmines Oh and they can't build off Blight while every other race can build anywhere on the map Oh and they regen faster on Blight Oh and they are vulnerable to Holy Light but are invulnerable to Death Coil Oh and they can't harvest lumber which makes Undead the only race that's able to realistically build more than one lumber harvester at a time (dunno why you'd need that tho) Wisps are untargetable while harvesting gold but the Entangled Goldmine is veeeery vulnerable, on par with a Burrow in terms of survivability (even less of it due to a bigger footprint) Also Wisps have like 160 or 140 HP which is just laughable Do Wisps have NE healing as well? Well, they have Moon Wells so they aren't dying very soon but yeah they're pretty easy to kill otherwise Orcs get Endurance Aura (more of a TC thing tbh) and they're one of the two builders that can't really move themselves (Humans and Undead can get in all sorts of nooks and crannies) Humans...get more food from a Town Hall but need to build waaay more Farms ig? Oh, right! Humans and Orcs are the only race that can build something without pulling workers for construction
@@markvanderwerf8592 You must not be an elf player to say that. Wisps have pathetic hp that makes them die to every lvl 2 aoe spell. They're so defenseless that 1 footie or ghoul wreaks havok in the base unless he's dealt with. My rating is Peasant, Peon, Wisp, Aco.
I hear the hate on the glaive thrower, but it used to be my go to for securing a win in an early game lead. If i happen get ahead early and be poking base while my opponent was behind and couldnt confront me, id use 2 glaive throwers to push the issue. With their range and increase to building damage, I'd keep harassing/poking a building until it went down or force a fight i knew id win. Having that early game siege option was nice, but it was only useful if i knew i had an early game lead in unit control.
this was very insightful for a newbie like me. also like that guy said, I think a tier list for workers would be kinda neat, if you think there's enough to talk about
Hey, While I know what your point on the whole workers being s tier and all is that they are impossible to not have. I do think you should rank them according to how strong the unique aspect is about the worker and how strong it is in comparison across the other races. Like Peasant is S tier because yes its a worker but also power building and militia make it S just as an example.
yeah I always got that wisps are on worse side of builders on par with peon. Very low health, and they DIE when creating production buildings. They do not destroy trees, but that never is an issue, you never get out of lumber, you will either win or lose long before you run out of trees. Even tho they can detonate, good luck with that with such very low hp. Compared to human/undead builders, they are much worse.
@@markoerakovic9899 Ohh I disagree hard here. Wisps are cheaper, faster, can passively scout the map while gathering ressources and detonate is super usefull at both denying xp and destroying summons. The only thing a Peon has over it is more life, which is not nearly enough to compete with all the advantages a wisp has
@@martinpersson1412 That is why I think peon is worst builder or on a par to wisp but compared to human/undead, wisp is worse imo. Wisp is cheaper but super fragile, but detonating it means you are sacrificing gold, using it to scout maps means using food pop, they are used up when making ancients or towers, do not destroy trees but feel worse to acquire lumber than other races and arguably, their gold mining method is arguably not good. While similar to Undead, they have to make town hall and then wait to connect to the mine, while other races will be well into mining it. Honestly, peasant and acolyte are best builders, then wisps and peon last when I think about it.
I was feeling that wisp are pretty balanced. I agree that the cheaper cost is good aspect even though you lose it to building certain buildings. The point of it being a dispel is very good but of course they do die very very easily. The scouting aspect is very strong. I actually wonder if the fact they don't cut trees is an upside or a downside.
Totally enjoyed watching these videos. I played so much Warcraft 3 back in early 2000s :) Those were good days. Loved playing 1v1 and 2v2 and custom maps.
Very much this. Night Elf units, on the whole, are generally the worst in the game. Most of them are situational or underpowered in some critical way, and most just lose to equivalents in other factions, or else can't function outside of their ideal use case. Druid of the claw and the Dryad are, indeed, basically the only "solid" units they have, and even they are nowhere near the staple, great units of other factions, except maybe by raw price and volume, in the case of Dryads. Night Elves live and die on moonwell and staff. They get massive value off of the units they want to use, because those units are near impossible to kill, and can be topped off, back to the front, and and fighting in under a minute. Getting an early kill on a Night Elf hero basically requires the Night Elf to make a terrible mistake, and it's almost as difficult to pick off a critical unit. Night Elves can also save archers and the like half the time by just... not moving them.
I love these tier lists, not only do we get the units listed, but it also comes with great insight and usage And don't forget, the hilarious, under the table, comedic twists
went back a bit. it's not clear there was a correction. but in fact, when making a hippo rider, range goes DOWN to 600 from 700 (or 500 from 600 if upgraded bows not researched). this appears to be a balance decision, otherwise hippo riders could easily kite ground ranged units. the decreased cooldown and higher dps was the tradeoff for the decreased range. i'm no pro, but hippo riders should be rated straight up worst unit in game, objectively. like any tier 2 air, they can be devastating if enemy is caught by surprise, but that's it. but at 290 gold, they actually cost more than wyverns and griffons, and they have an inferior dps to wyverns, and don't devastate heavy units like griffons do. it's also awkward to mass produce. you need two AoW and two AoWind, whereas wyverns and griffons (say) just need two beastiaries or two aviaries, respectively.
Ne has always been the highest skill race to use. You win with ne because you are just better also they lend themselves to harassment which makes them the most fun to play hardest to win with
I agree with the setup. NE is utility and reaction based. Good creeping capabilities because AoW and range units, but they lack tank until you get to bears. Squishy units you have to kite with, but i find teching up is easier with NE.
So you've proved, that NE has fairly mediocre/situational units on their own and only bears/dryads work, if you are looking for raw dmg. The whole plot with NE's their unique, kinda funky, but strong style (moon wells -> HP/mana for casters, unit and heroes; lumber gathering -> infinite lumber/no travel time/can collect lumber anywhere, entangled mine -> wisps are protected in the mine/ancient can move to other gold mines - 'base relocation', ancients eat wood to heal and can be uprooted ->tanks, detonate -> dispel/deny xp from kill; building -> borrows/consume wisp for building structure, therefore untargetable like orc peons) Basically the whole race is one-trick pony, very situational and has low versatility, require setups/precise timings/specific maps to overpower the opponent's strategy, otherwise they struggle to compete with other races.
Also worth mentioning about the Wisp: Although it gathers lumber half as fast as Peasants and Peons (before taking into account their travel time), It doesn't chop down trees while doing so. This can be a pain in the early game due to not making more space in your base (as well as having to make more Wisps to get enough lumber), but in the late game, it becomes a very good feature, because it means you don't have to worry about running out of lumber. ALSO, you can use Detonate to deny experience to your opponent. For Faerie Dragon, worth mentioning that in Patch 1.32.10 (dated 2021-04-14), their damage was nerfed -- before that, mass Faerie Dragons had a good shot at winning even against Fiend-based Undead armies (only 2 Food each, so equal Food of Fiends at 3 Food each couldn't Web them all). They were also a staple of the Night Elf vs Orc Mass Talons strategy -- have 2 or 3 around to punish Disenchant of Cyclone.
Night elf was what I played back in 2003 the most. I used to go archers/huntresses to riders. Worked well im 2003, plus if people built a lot of anti flying you can separate them.
I think would be cool if archers could jump into Mountain Giant shoulder and attack from there, but doesnt remove the attack and spells from the giant. It would attack the current giant target.
Methinks Night elves are a bit like Eldar in Warhammer, being a specialist army that excells at a specific thing but sucks at anything else (hence the many Cs :D)
Few days ago, on russian speaking W3 channel "WellplayedTV" we watched your pro game from past. You were facing Hot, and his Talon, Demon, Beastmaster, Tinker strategy. You played that very nice! P.s. i also love how almost every unit is every tear list is "interesting")))
I remember watching a Wtii video of cut content and how there was originally gonna be 13 race one of which was a Dragon race where the building was gonna be a Dragon that would grow over time. Always thought it was cool that Night Elf's buildings being alive were at first a Dragon faction before switching to trees that would grow, at least their main HQ.
Wisp also gathers lumber without harming the little trees 🥹 How cute is that! But then again, the Night Elves are protectors of the forests, so naturally they also have the most brutal deforestation methods 😂
I wonder, in air vs air matches, how often dismounting the hippogriff riders is the better option. Probably vs gargs, flying machines, dragonhawks, other hippogriffs, and bat riders. Neutral vs druids in air, faerie dragons, but better as a rider vs destroyers, frost wyrms, wyverns, and griffins. Better as a rider vs hero aoe too. Mostly, they are a way to salvage archers that survived early, or once you control the sky to give your surviving hippogriffs a ground attack. They also suffer from upgrades, only archers, glaive throwers, huntresses, and hippogriff riders use that weapon type, meanwhile all the good night elf units use the other upgrade path. The armor upgrade doesn't even apply to glaive throwers. 3 early game units +1 late, vs 7 late game units that are all better. Hp values for ancients 450 ancient of wonders, 600 ancient protector, War, Wind, and Lore all 900, 2000 for eternity, 1700 for ages, 1300 for life. 40-50 ish for war, wind, life, lore. Slightly more foru upgraded ages and eternity. 20-25 for wonders and uprooted ancient protector. Rooted ancient protector is 40-50 ranged. I kinda wish all the night elf buildings gave exp on a kill when uprooted. NE is probably the hardest race to understand for a new player due to how needed ancient of war creeping is. They also have to micro from the start to not have the war kill the creeps! I'd give hippogriff riders shadowmeld (huntresses have it, and sure cats are stealthier than hippos, but it would be sorta similar to garg stoneform and give a lot more micro options to them.) Actually, on second thought I wouldn't, only human has truesight on a flying. The harass hippos could do at night if they had shadowmeld would be too hard to deal with. Darn. Another idea would be to let both hippo and archer attack at the same time. Riders have the same exact damage as an Archer... great for a 2 supply unit, terrible for a 4 supply one. Hippos lose their 50-57 damage when mounted making stuff like gargs shred them. Fire on the move with archers like sc2 battlecruisers, and within melee switch to hippo damage sorta like how hydras and roaches in sc2 will use a melee animation instead of their ranged one when in melee (which mechanically will ignore anti ranged guardian shield.)
The one thing I'd want most for WC3 patches at this point is just to move all the D tier units into at least C. Having any unit be completely useless just feels like a huge waste of potential. They should all have at least 1 or 2 good use cases.
43:25 this is basically the summary of all the NE information on the internet, everyone says NE are overpowered but everytime someone goes over their units and strats they usually go like "well, NE heroes suck, NE units suck, NE has no damage and no defense and no healing... wait why do NE have such a high WR again?"
Hello Grubby, I would like to disagree, I was 2006 WCG player of WC3 in my country. We used Glave throwers with POTM+KOTG hero, rush precision aura lvl2 and get all damage upgrades in Huntress hall and rush t2 for splash upgrade, You would use Mass grave throwers against Night elf mirror, because mass glave throwers counter mass bears, shoot and move back. Also, on certain bigger maps same strat against orcs with certain timing, if orcs dont go air Wyverns.
Archers cannot fit through tight spaces while footman and ghoul can. I realised this after I saw a woman get stuck on a fence... Old Blizzard is very thorough in their design.
I fully expected Grubby to gaslight Night Elf into thinking bears and dryads are C tier in an attempt to change the meta. Great job Grubby, loved all your explanations and the addition of hippo riders!
Weird, back in the day I played Archer-Talons and later mounted Archers (hyppogryph riders) because health pool matters a lot. Imagine getting marine with 3x its hp that can fly. I guess a lot changed during the last 15 years LOL.
Fairy dragons are Acher cost slightly less than archer damage but slightly more health. Same 2 population, fliers, less range. POtM aura fits them too. Would love to see more of them played some day.
I assumed that Archer would be tier A because most games i've seen with Nelf have so many uses for archer. Or at least i thought. But then again im not a professional
It all makes sense now! Archimond was summoned into this world and the whisps deal damage to summonables. That's why they could kill him. [Bruh in Darnassian]
Night elf is a bit odd. Archer, dryad and bears are pretty good forming their main strategy against most. Then they have some stuff like mass dott vs Orc, faerie dragons vs Us etc but most units are pretty niche. Their heroes aren't the best either, basically lacking a good aura which other races do have. However their macro mechanics like aow creeping, expansions and moonwells are the strongest overall. They have the cheapest expansion that's hardest to raid, some of the best creeping and a base defense mechanic that's super useful even if you aren't attacked unlike the other civs. Also their shop is probably the best with the best staff and best orb I think which compensate for their subpar units and heroes.
Really depressing. Elf has so much untapped potential that we'll never see realized because we are way past the time where re-works and bigger balance changes are a thing.
Rifles are scalable even to lategame. Which is annoying. If you're NE vs Hu or vs UD, then fiends and rifles can be carried to the lategame, so u can pump them out and creep with no issues. But the NE needs to trade out his hunts or he will be in a massive deficit. They also creep worse because of lower damage.
the problem is, hunts were TOO good. they were the fastest, had aoe. blizzard tried to fix them by making them unarmored, but this just means they become useless to straight up liability after the first 10 minutes.
I played Warcraft 18-20 years ago and when I saw that the enemy made 6-8 dryads, I realized that I won. These are the favorite units of players who overestimated their abilities. Despite all their features and capabilities, these are really weak units in terms of characteristics. Yes, they can do wonders, but this requires a developed micro and great understanding of strategy. Knitting does not work if enemy refuses to play in your game and simply go to the base with superior force and win. Every basic range unit is counter to dryads, and not only due to the armor/attack types, but because they just bad with their hp and damage numbers.
I wanna try wc3 and this makes me sad. I like NE, but from the comments here I take it they would be trash in the hands of the beginner who can't use staff of preservation, and doesn't creep with ancient of war. What does healing with the moon well matter if your weak unit goes back in and just dies again
I think you said the Wisp damages summoned units twice and forgot that you didn't say that it subtracts mana from enemies in the area. Also, I wish Wisps had upgrades for detonate at tier 2 and tier 3. Would be so cool!
In the hero tier list Grubby said that Night Elf heroes were generally a little weaker (no S's) but they made up for it with their units. And now in the unit tier list they're all mostly in C. Unless Night Elf is clearly the worst faction, he's underrating them somewhere.
NE has some gimmicks. 1) Your expansion can help creep for itself/your barracks can creep for your expansion. 2) Moonwells are pretty good and make otherwise underwhelming tavern heroes that much better. Basically, take any tavern hero and move them up a tier with elf =P 3) Staff of preservation is pretty good. 4) DH has an S tier combat ult on the only hero that gets built first. Archmage mass teleport? Not that great in 1v1. DK's raise dead? Meh. Farseer's EQ? LOL. Blademaster ult? Actually decent, but not metamorphosis good. 5) Your units can be garbage but if you have more of them than the opp, you can win. 6) Bear/dryad/archer =P I still wonder how NE manages to keep up its FFA winrate though. This logic should state that NE is uniquely garbage when all players have lots of gold and full armies.
Funny thing is, RoC Hippo Riders were good, much better than TFT. First, Faerie Dragons didn't exist so there was no alternative general purpose air unit in the NE arsenal. Second, they were the only heavy air unit that was available in Tier 2. Wyverns and Gryphons required Tier 3 so they came out much later. I think they dealt more damage too, because Archers did more.
I always thought the Night Elves were unfinished. Even their RoC campaign was shorter than the other races and you didn't get access to all their units in the campaign. You never got to use the Chimera in the RoC campaign.
Night elf players are generally more skilled then players of other races, because without perfect execution elf loses every single matchup. It's very common sight when undead players dont even know their build, map, strategies and so on, just spam fiends and some frontline units, and win against night elf player who is trying their best. NE players know despair when only 3 unit types are usable, while rest are never a good choice. NE have to be better as a player to win, while Human can cheese, orc can outvalue with heroes, and undead can mash their face in keyboard and destroy elfs without any effort. I'm not speaking as a pro, but in my middle level of play it is noticeable difference between games on elf and other races. Hum Orc Und - normal game, NE - survival horror.
Quite interesting. I've heard top players say elf is easy to play but I am not familiar with mid level talks about elf being weak. I haven't played the game in awhile but the way I could maybe see the bridge in this gap between mid and high would be that fundamentals are most important on elf maybe. Like a top player will have the fundamentals down so it would feel natural to play elf, while when you're still on that learning curve you're punished harder. IDK if it's true that elf is weak at mid tier btw.
Perhaps having options to so many good but situational counter units means that NE has an answer to everything, so they are strong because they can react to most strategies? I think that could explain why a race full of tier C units feels so powerful.
Except that's not quite true. The C units are fairly situational, and because armies aren't composed of just ONE type of unit, the "specialized" counter units also quickly get outscaled. For instance, you'd think Druids of the Talon might counter tauren with cyclone, right? Well, not so fast if spirit walkers are there to dispel it. Or faerie dragons countering autocasting inner fire priests or bloodlusting shamans? Too bad, your opponent pre-buffed. A proper counter unit needs to also just be good standalone in a general mixed composition, and many NE units just *aren't*. It's why elf often has to rely on gimmicks like ancient of war creeping or fast expo to be up a base on an opponent and just grind them down by attrition of much, MUCH worse units, and why people generally say that elf loses against most other races on an equal base setting.
how does ne counter mass gargs? mass gyros? triple orc hero high level? mass steam engines? mass summons? mass bats?.... (dont include neutral heroes as they are not nelf).... they are only balanced during a certain time frame of early to mid game where micro and maneuver tactics still apply
@@mavingamos8771 If your heroes are weaker than opponet you are basically doomed as nelf, units are just simply worse so if you didnt established win before certain time you get rekt. I have no clue how to siege as nefl coz everythign siegewise is so utterly bad. Funy enough my best sige attempts are usually with lvl6 DH
I'd put the bear in S+ (best unit in the game) and dryands at a at best. The thing is, of you gave bears to any other race, they'd use it and would gain a lot. Dryads are only useful due to dispell, their stats are just abysmal for 3 supply. Yes, they are fast and have magic immunity, but no armor and no health makes them still die like flies.
Ehhh, not sure about "best units in the game" on bears. I'd much, MUCH rather have tauren, because against spellbreakers, you *HAVE* to deplete your bears' mana, and then they absolutely gobble up moonwell mana b/c moonwells healing mana is SO awful. Aboms/knights: not sure about aboms, but knights have EXCEPTIONALLY high armor, which would make them terrific heavy melee units for elf since they'd gain so much from wells. Druids of the Claw are very solid units, IMO, but I wouldn't say they're supreme.
@@Ilyak1986 Tauren are stronger in a mass fight, but they cost more and as grubby pointed out, are useless outside of combat. They are also weaker against buildings, tho that's niche. And yes, spell breakers destroy bears mana, but their own health will be depleeded even faster
@@pinthecool1 "useless outside of combat" basically applies to...every unit without a heal, or workers. So, I don't think that's saying much. And I'm not sure I want to use my *melee* units against buildings in games in which my opponent has proper static defenses.
@@Ilyak1986 1. Yes, thus every unit is a bit worse than bear, right? 2. You don't want to go for siege, especially on elf, you'd rather brute force with bears. Also base races exist
What if Hippos were 1 pop? Other idea I had was if Hippos had a very high natural health regeneration outside of combat, so Hippo Riders gained that benefit, and also the benefit of Elune's Grace, so they'd be a spell resistant, robust unit that didn't eat up as much moon well healing. Probably too powerful, heh.
I think if we were to add buildings to the tier lists, moon wells would need their own tier above S. Night elf is allowed to have below average quality in its heroes and units solely because they also have moon wells. To put it another way, imagine any unit in the game could be given to another race. As interesting as a lot of these scenarios would be, I don't think any of them would completely break the game to make one race vastly superior to all others because it has access to one extra unit. Now imagine any other race having access to moon wells - that, I think, would totally break the game.
Hippogryph Riders have 100 LESS range than archers btw Also I do think Moon Wells, Ancient of War, Wisps (scouting, dispel), Staff (combined with wells), are the main reasons Nelf is good. I've thought this for a while that Nelf's Heroes are not great and only have two particularly good units in Dyrad and Bears.
The entire problem with nelf is being outscaled the longer the game goes on. No air prevention, nelf base is rather weak, tower are joke compared to human/orc or even UD. There are 2 good units being dryad and bears. Dryads being so little hp and no armor makes themvery vulerable lategame
It is also funny in Hearthstone game that Druid of the Claw is now just as solid as the WC3 version. Earlier, it was 4/4 with Rush in cat form, and 5/6 in bear form with Taunt, kinda garbage for a 5 mana cost minion. Now they are 5/7 cat and 6/9 bear. Cheers
I felt like you missed an interesting point about wisps in that their lumber gathering is so unique and cool - they don't cut trees, instead they just circle around it and produce lumber from a distance without needing to return to base. This makes it so a worker of yours can passively scout or await to make an expansion while still producing resources. Moreover when a wisp makes a building he turns into that building, consuming the wisp. Overall one of the most unique, clever and flavourful designs in the history of RTSes.
......... Zerg.
Wisp is only consumed if u build a tree
@@PlaneFlightz Drones could never compare to wisps. Their sacrifice for building is the only similarity.
And once they "sacrifice" for a building, in some cases, they eat trees for breakfast. :)
Thankfully they aren't consumed on non-ancients, I always thought it was cool how it felt like that little wisp is now in control of this massive powerful ancient.
I like how he said Archimonde was blown up by 100k wisps, it makes sense since Archimonde was summoned which makes wisps do super extra damage to him.
But does if deals pure damage tho? Cause archimonde armor is divine.
More like he was teleported, they just burst through his mana.
Yeah but with that same logic an army of priests should've easily dispelled him back in the end of Undead campaign.
@@Meitti First of all, probabbly werent as many priest cause many died to the attack to antonidas city (i dont remember the name) and also when Archimonde spawn he destroy everything around him instantly
This made me audible lol 🤣
Watching these ratings even tho i stopped playing wc3 10+ years ago just shows how much of a masterpiece this game is, and how much i love this game.
Honestly, after watching them I feel like playing through the campaign again.
Dryad S tier for that "I'm so Wasted" voice line.
Hasn’t aged well considering all that went down at Blizzard
Ad a kid I didn’t understand that line lol
@@wickedgrinazlmao yikes
I don't understand, is this some Reforged joke? T_T
Good thing I still have my old 2003 CD.
Im not in the season 💀
22:22 - “bear all in” “bare down on the enemy” “Im-paw-sible”
Those are some Grant level puns.
We need a tierlist of famous tournament games
we need a tierlist of Grubby's tierlists
That one Moon vs Tod game would absolutely go on S tier. You know which one.
Tierlist of pro players
@@sh1nebGrubby won’t go this way, he still wants to have friends. But if you ask me…Currently: Tier S - The Emperor, Tier A - Lyn, Tier B - Moon, Focus, Ee0. Tier C - The rest? 😅
@@tntaclegrape nah its not that good, mass tanks on TS, right?
What that tier distribution tells me is that Night Elf units exist to support the backbone of the Night Elf army: Archers, Dryads and Bears. It helps that at the highest level massable bread and butter ranged units are some of the most microable units in the game, just look at Marines in Starcraft.
All that and the general hero power level of Night Elves tells me that the real S++ tier unit in Night Elf is the Moon Well.
Yeah moon wells are good until the sun rises and you have 0 moonjuice for the next 5 mins. Meanwhile orc pops 3 salves to heal 1200. And UD has a mobile mana+hp fountain.
@@Gaze73ehh salves require buying and slots. UD healing comes late (relatively). Elf you're buying moonwells from minute 0 just for supply. Also you can't bank moonwell energy in daytime, but you don't lose it if you don't use it.
I think moonwells are insane because they're in your base so they synergize stupidly well with scroll of town portal. You can engage and burn enemy HP/mana, scroll back home where your moonwells are waiting and then book it straight back to the enemy.
Grubby: makes a tierlist
Also Grubby: 😮
21:35 Bear is probably S due to the built-in healing ability equal to a few moon wells. One of the reason I’ve started to play them back in 2003 when I was introduced to them by one of my buddies. Who wants taurens when there are bears 😅 This is probably one of the most favorite units for many folks out there.
Yes and probably dryads are tier a.
Caster has Heal and a lot of HP and than bear form.
@@pablocortinas360 Immune to magic, I am not sure about that. Just wait when a night elf of Happy’s micro control will be born, but yes, I can see in most people’ hands it’s tier A.
And that you can have t2 bears out and ready when t3 hits you can instantly have many t3 units immediatly.
Bears are the most squishy heavy armor frontliners. They die extremely quickly and you really need double staff to justify massing them. Also don't forget they require tier 3 with masters training researched.Not even mentioning you can dispel their buffs. Those are big downsides. A is justified.
Your sisters wedding: 😒😒
Grubby tierlist video: 😎🍾🍷
That's really sad
@@xxxx-nf7bf its a meme, nothing serious
i want this tierlist audio to be played at MY wedding
@@xxxx-nf7bf why? Weddings are so boring, it super sucks
I remember doing the NElf first campaign mission. I simply couldn't do it. I was maxing my population with archers and was attacking, but a Divine Shield by the Paladin and he was destroying my army faster than I could destroy him. Of course, I wasn't really microing my army properly.
But, when I put an Ancient of War in front of my archers, the mission suddenly became possible.
What an awesome AHA moment. I think that's how the devs designed the race too
The level 7 Paladin casually reviving two armies was definetly not a fun experience the first time. Especially if you messed up your first attack and lost the Fulborgs
That Paladin with his devotion aura turned those footmen and Grunts so durable vs my no-micro noob ass that i built and uprooted a bunch of ancients with an Archer backline. Years later, i felt like a complete moron when i finally realized that kiting is a thing.
@@ottokarl5427 fulborgs lmao
I know i'm late to the party, but how you do it is to fill the choke point with archers during night, and make them go Meld. Or, surround and Meld. Boom.
You now invented sentry's force fields from SC.
How are Night Elves so good with so many C tier units? Moon Wells and Ancient of War. Night Elves dominate with their buildings.
This also makes it very frustrating to play the race (lose so many battles on the map) and against (hard to beat when they can use wells effectively).
What the race lacks in flexibility, they make up for it with strength of their staple units.
Archers are arguably the most versatile out of all tier 1 units due to having a range attack. Dryads can very quickly take the map control until the opponent have the critical mass to fight back which take a while. Bears are arguably the best tier 3 melee unit, capable to even win against knights with correct usage of rejuvs
There is also orb of venom, wisp detonates, and staff of preservation
Context is still important. heroes are strong, can utilize the tavern revival due to moonwells, tavern heroes are useful, zeppellin is useful, wisps are S tier, buildings fight and move, unique staff and orb, so NE stands on a hundred different legs unlike UD for example
Great synergy as well.
It fits into their lore perfectly, the land is their strength, they hide in the woods and do hit and run attacks.
I think Night Elf units are balanced around the fact that they have Moon Wells. Because Night Elves have such a safety net and the ability to so freely recover at home, their units are balanced to be a little worse. Whereas Humans, in contrast, have useless Farms, so their recovery comes baked into their units.
mmmm... what happened is that they were the first race that blizzard made. they were the "good guys" and got too many goodies. so they had some things baked in that were inherently broken and has since made them difficult to balance without extreme revisions. back in the day, ancients could attack when producing, for example. hunts simply do too much for a tier one unit--they're the fastest melee, they have aoe, etc., etc.
I keep screwing myself over, making faerie dragons too often. I can't resist they are just so damn cute lol.
Yeah they’re fun but they’re really only good against human priest sorc, 14-16 damage otherwise is just too low, same as footman
I like to dick around and try to mass them against my opponents lol
I think mass Fairy Dragon work well against Undead.
It's beautiful
Glove Thrower's art design is incredible now that I think about it, it's such a great way to make a catapult look so much more sophisticated for elves in a high fantasy setting
Darling, it's not a catapult. It's a scorpion.
I played NE since the very begining, fell in love with the aesthetics, and also felt the same way about their heroes and units, all felt kinda weak. But somehow NE manages to win games.
When i was a kid i loved elfs cuz of cool bears, attractive archers and dryads, now that i am a little older, i love elfs because they have cool, strong bears, attractive archers and dryads...and fun heroes, not a lot has changed 😅
At the last tier list, you should rank all races workers against eachother
peasant,wisp, ghoul, acolyte, peon. Being able to creep with peasants and power build is part of what makes Human viable. Wisp is vital, and crafty, good scout, good movement speed, can deny exp. Best worker scout in game. Ghoul great being able to creep then return to harvest lumber while recovering, but because its the defaul melee unit, maybe a double edged sword. acolytes better fighters than peons, more hp, and recover on blight. Peons just suck, ad their "strength" in burrows, is simulateously an achilles heel, for if taken out, orc can outright lose the match immediatly. peons repair burrows too slowly for them to be higher on this list, and burrows range really not long enough to be actually deadly, just a deterrence.
all races tierlist but it's reallife, not WC3
My favorite thing about the wisp is harvesting lumber doesn't harm the trees. It doesn't matter much at all for balance, but I love how thematic it is.
Grubby had to put on his jacket for this tier list
I think you forgot one thing about Dryads that I hate: They are so hard to heal. No Rejuvenation because they are magic immune and they waste so much of a Moon Well because of their Mana Pool. How many times was I unable to heal all my units because the Dryads wasted too much and I lazily just sent everyone to the Moon Wells with one click.
We need Worker Tier List (including "neutral" workers like Naga and Blood Elves). There are actually pretty significant differences between them!
Wisp, peasant, acolyte, peon. Wisps just so versatile and a bit cheaper, they carry Night Elf. Best expansion, can creep with ancient of war or tree of life. Hard to raid with good sim city, can avoid skill shots and can even threaten tower pushes.
@@markvanderwerf8592 I dunno, I think peasants also carry human with power building and militia creeping. Not sure aow should be included in the equation either, as we'd have to include every building from all races, like the arcane tower and stuff. Also, wisps get consumed upon building, which, while not the end of the world, shouldn't be ignored.
Worker units have 3 unique traits in all 4 classes, I like that.
Wisps can Detonate, collect Lumber passively, and consume itself to build.
Acolytes can become a Shade for vision, do not have to be occupied to build, and can destroy their own buildings for resources.
Peons are safe inside their buildings during construction, use a burrow to defend their base, and can learn Pillage.
Humans can build together fast, become a Militia which is not a joke, and can learn Advanced Lumber Harvesting.
Some traits are more useful than others, but there are exactly 3 unique traits in each worker. I really like that lol
@@SyRose901note: Acolytes don't move around while harvesting (which means they're more vulnerable to Flame Strike and Blizzard and such) and they can't go in Goldmines
Oh and they can't build off Blight while every other race can build anywhere on the map
Oh and they regen faster on Blight
Oh and they are vulnerable to Holy Light but are invulnerable to Death Coil
Oh and they can't harvest lumber which makes Undead the only race that's able to realistically build more than one lumber harvester at a time (dunno why you'd need that tho)
Wisps are untargetable while harvesting gold but the Entangled Goldmine is veeeery vulnerable, on par with a Burrow in terms of survivability (even less of it due to a bigger footprint)
Also Wisps have like 160 or 140 HP which is just laughable
Do Wisps have NE healing as well? Well, they have Moon Wells so they aren't dying very soon but yeah they're pretty easy to kill otherwise
Orcs get Endurance Aura (more of a TC thing tbh) and they're one of the two builders that can't really move themselves (Humans and Undead can get in all sorts of nooks and crannies)
Humans...get more food from a Town Hall but need to build waaay more Farms ig?
Oh, right! Humans and Orcs are the only race that can build something without pulling workers for construction
@@markvanderwerf8592 You must not be an elf player to say that. Wisps have pathetic hp that makes them die to every lvl 2 aoe spell. They're so defenseless that 1 footie or ghoul wreaks havok in the base unless he's dealt with. My rating is Peasant, Peon, Wisp, Aco.
Finally my race. This is what I've been waiting for
Glaive Thrower in tier D for "Damn It...."
Also, Grubby's background filter makes him look like he has the Killmonger/Phoenix comb-over dreads
I loved how wisps turned into the NE buildings, like theyre sacrificing themselves to bring the tree to life.
Does the caterpillar sacrifice itself to become the butterfly?
Yeah, they are just metamorphosing.
Night elf, far more than the other races, seems to depend on synergy and counterplay. You exploit synergy, you counter, you win.
Thx for the tier list.
Please don't forget to make an extra episode for mercs (zeppelin, sapper,.... Ogre)
Night Elf is competitive because they have the beauty factor. Don't underestimate pretty people, they win even when they loose.
I was literally thinking about when you'd make the night elf one, and then I check youtube and you uploaded 2 minutes ago lol. Great timing.
I hear the hate on the glaive thrower, but it used to be my go to for securing a win in an early game lead. If i happen get ahead early and be poking base while my opponent was behind and couldnt confront me, id use 2 glaive throwers to push the issue. With their range and increase to building damage, I'd keep harassing/poking a building until it went down or force a fight i knew id win. Having that early game siege option was nice, but it was only useful if i knew i had an early game lead in unit control.
this was very insightful for a newbie like me. also like that guy said, I think a tier list for workers would be kinda neat, if you think there's enough to talk about
Hey, While I know what your point on the whole workers being s tier and all is that they are impossible to not have. I do think you should rank them according to how strong the unique aspect is about the worker and how strong it is in comparison across the other races. Like Peasant is S tier because yes its a worker but also power building and militia make it S just as an example.
yeah I always got that wisps are on worse side of builders on par with peon. Very low health, and they DIE when creating production buildings. They do not destroy trees, but that never is an issue, you never get out of lumber, you will either win or lose long before you run out of trees. Even tho they can detonate, good luck with that with such very low hp. Compared to human/undead builders, they are much worse.
@@markoerakovic9899 Ohh I disagree hard here. Wisps are cheaper, faster, can passively scout the map while gathering ressources and detonate is super usefull at both denying xp and destroying summons. The only thing a Peon has over it is more life, which is not nearly enough to compete with all the advantages a wisp has
@@martinpersson1412 That is why I think peon is worst builder or on a par to wisp but compared to human/undead, wisp is worse imo. Wisp is cheaper but super fragile, but detonating it means you are sacrificing gold, using it to scout maps means using food pop, they are used up when making ancients or towers, do not destroy trees but feel worse to acquire lumber than other races and arguably, their gold mining method is arguably not good. While similar to Undead, they have to make town hall and then wait to connect to the mine, while other races will be well into mining it. Honestly, peasant and acolyte are best builders, then wisps and peon last when I think about it.
I was feeling that wisp are pretty balanced. I agree that the cheaper cost is good aspect even though you lose it to building certain buildings. The point of it being a dispel is very good but of course they do die very very easily. The scouting aspect is very strong. I actually wonder if the fact they don't cut trees is an upside or a downside.
@@martinpersson1412 I believe you meant "useful" when you said "super useless at both denying xp and destroying summons."
Totally enjoyed watching these videos. I played so much Warcraft 3 back in early 2000s :) Those were good days. Loved playing 1v1 and 2v2 and custom maps.
43:20 "because how else are they balanced? they are 50% win rate, roughly"
moon wells
And staff. You cant kill nightelf heroes because they just get staffed and fully healed immediatly.
Their good units are also 'really' good.
And they have ancients so it all makes sense
Night Elf takes more effort than Undead and Orc. You need so much more understanding to pull it off.
Very much this.
Night Elf units, on the whole, are generally the worst in the game. Most of them are situational or underpowered in some critical way, and most just lose to equivalents in other factions, or else can't function outside of their ideal use case. Druid of the claw and the Dryad are, indeed, basically the only "solid" units they have, and even they are nowhere near the staple, great units of other factions, except maybe by raw price and volume, in the case of Dryads.
Night Elves live and die on moonwell and staff. They get massive value off of the units they want to use, because those units are near impossible to kill, and can be topped off, back to the front, and and fighting in under a minute. Getting an early kill on a Night Elf hero basically requires the Night Elf to make a terrible mistake, and it's almost as difficult to pick off a critical unit.
Night Elves can also save archers and the like half the time by just... not moving them.
I love these tier lists, not only do we get the units listed, but it also comes with great insight and usage
And don't forget, the hilarious, under the table, comedic twists
went back a bit. it's not clear there was a correction. but in fact, when making a hippo rider, range goes DOWN to 600 from 700 (or 500 from 600 if upgraded bows not researched). this appears to be a balance decision, otherwise hippo riders could easily kite ground ranged units. the decreased cooldown and higher dps was the tradeoff for the decreased range. i'm no pro, but hippo riders should be rated straight up worst unit in game, objectively. like any tier 2 air, they can be devastating if enemy is caught by surprise, but that's it. but at 290 gold, they actually cost more than wyverns and griffons, and they have an inferior dps to wyverns, and don't devastate heavy units like griffons do. it's also awkward to mass produce. you need two AoW and two AoWind, whereas wyverns and griffons (say) just need two beastiaries or two aviaries, respectively.
Ne has always been the highest skill race to use. You win with ne because you are just better also they lend themselves to harassment which makes them the most fun to play hardest to win with
After all these years, I didn't realize archers have an inherent passive of Elune's Grace? wow me.
It was added in the RoR Patch right before the release of TFT.
I did check the patch notes history. And it just means I either haven't played much NE, or the group select always make them least prio.
@@mercenarymudcrab It was added way after TFT. Archers had 340 HP, it was nerfed into 240 (255 later on) and grace was added
@@hachimakihoshino4832 I'd prefer the old archers, 255 hp is impossible to micro vs grunts or ghouls, they seem to die in 3 hits.
I agree with the setup. NE is utility and reaction based. Good creeping capabilities because AoW and range units, but they lack tank until you get to bears. Squishy units you have to kite with, but i find teching up is easier with NE.
If you're putting ancient of war on there, you may as well also chuck in moon wells, probably one of the most powerful buildings in the game
Grubby, pro Orc player, teasing us all by rating Orc last XD can't wait!
The Orc tierlist is gonna be 3 hours long, lol
>Can't walk between 2 moonwells
THICC mommy elven waifu
THUNDERTHIGHS
So you've proved, that NE has fairly mediocre/situational units on their own and only bears/dryads work, if you are looking for raw dmg.
The whole plot with NE's their unique, kinda funky, but strong style (moon wells -> HP/mana for casters, unit and heroes; lumber gathering -> infinite lumber/no travel time/can collect lumber anywhere, entangled mine -> wisps are protected in the mine/ancient can move to other gold mines - 'base relocation', ancients eat wood to heal and can be uprooted ->tanks, detonate -> dispel/deny xp from kill; building -> borrows/consume wisp for building structure, therefore untargetable like orc peons)
Basically the whole race is one-trick pony, very situational and has low versatility, require setups/precise timings/specific maps to overpower the opponent's strategy, otherwise they struggle to compete with other races.
Also worth mentioning about the Wisp: Although it gathers lumber half as fast as Peasants and Peons (before taking into account their travel time), It doesn't chop down trees while doing so. This can be a pain in the early game due to not making more space in your base (as well as having to make more Wisps to get enough lumber), but in the late game, it becomes a very good feature, because it means you don't have to worry about running out of lumber. ALSO, you can use Detonate to deny experience to your opponent.
For Faerie Dragon, worth mentioning that in Patch 1.32.10 (dated 2021-04-14), their damage was nerfed -- before that, mass Faerie Dragons had a good shot at winning even against Fiend-based Undead armies (only 2 Food each, so equal Food of Fiends at 3 Food each couldn't Web them all). They were also a staple of the Night Elf vs Orc Mass Talons strategy -- have 2 or 3 around to punish Disenchant of Cyclone.
Night elf was what I played back in 2003 the most. I used to go archers/huntresses to riders. Worked well im 2003, plus if people built a lot of anti flying you can separate them.
Grubby tierlist just gave a huge algorighm circulation to your channel love seeing the appriciation you get back!
Finally Grubby covering the best race (please dont kill me)
It IS the best race! Night Elf master race 😎🔥
I can't wait for Grubby to do a tier list of all his tier lists
This joke was really funny like the first five times
I think would be cool if archers could jump into Mountain Giant shoulder and attack from there, but doesnt remove the attack and spells from the giant. It would attack the current giant target.
Gasp!! Love this idea!
Oh damn, glaive thrower used to be super op for 1 or 2 patches. It was actually pretty ridiculous.
Methinks Night elves are a bit like Eldar in Warhammer, being a specialist army that excells at a specific thing but sucks at anything else (hence the many Cs :D)
NE needs more love imo
Few days ago, on russian speaking W3 channel "WellplayedTV" we watched your pro game from past. You were facing Hot, and his Talon, Demon, Beastmaster, Tinker strategy. You played that very nice!
P.s. i also love how almost every unit is every tear list is "interesting")))
I remember watching a Wtii video of cut content and how there was originally gonna be 13 race one of which was a Dragon race where the building was gonna be a Dragon that would grow over time. Always thought it was cool that Night Elf's buildings being alive were at first a Dragon faction before switching to trees that would grow, at least their main HQ.
Yes yes yes yes i have been looking for this , instead of putting worker as an s tier you should compare it to other race's worker
Wisp also gathers lumber without harming the little trees 🥹 How cute is that! But then again, the Night Elves are protectors of the forests, so naturally they also have the most brutal deforestation methods 😂
Human and Night Elf are my favs so this is cool
I wonder, in air vs air matches, how often dismounting the hippogriff riders is the better option. Probably vs gargs, flying machines, dragonhawks, other hippogriffs, and bat riders. Neutral vs druids in air, faerie dragons, but better as a rider vs destroyers, frost wyrms, wyverns, and griffins. Better as a rider vs hero aoe too. Mostly, they are a way to salvage archers that survived early, or once you control the sky to give your surviving hippogriffs a ground attack. They also suffer from upgrades, only archers, glaive throwers, huntresses, and hippogriff riders use that weapon type, meanwhile all the good night elf units use the other upgrade path. The armor upgrade doesn't even apply to glaive throwers. 3 early game units +1 late, vs 7 late game units that are all better.
Hp values for ancients 450 ancient of wonders, 600 ancient protector, War, Wind, and Lore all 900, 2000 for eternity, 1700 for ages, 1300 for life. 40-50 ish for war, wind, life, lore. Slightly more foru upgraded ages and eternity. 20-25 for wonders and uprooted ancient protector. Rooted ancient protector is 40-50 ranged. I kinda wish all the night elf buildings gave exp on a kill when uprooted. NE is probably the hardest race to understand for a new player due to how needed ancient of war creeping is. They also have to micro from the start to not have the war kill the creeps!
I'd give hippogriff riders shadowmeld (huntresses have it, and sure cats are stealthier than hippos, but it would be sorta similar to garg stoneform and give a lot more micro options to them.) Actually, on second thought I wouldn't, only human has truesight on a flying. The harass hippos could do at night if they had shadowmeld would be too hard to deal with. Darn. Another idea would be to let both hippo and archer attack at the same time. Riders have the same exact damage as an Archer... great for a 2 supply unit, terrible for a 4 supply one. Hippos lose their 50-57 damage when mounted making stuff like gargs shred them. Fire on the move with archers like sc2 battlecruisers, and within melee switch to hippo damage sorta like how hydras and roaches in sc2 will use a melee animation instead of their ranged one when in melee (which mechanically will ignore anti ranged guardian shield.)
The one thing I'd want most for WC3 patches at this point is just to move all the D tier units into at least C. Having any unit be completely useless just feels like a huge waste of potential. They should all have at least 1 or 2 good use cases.
43:25 this is basically the summary of all the NE information on the internet, everyone says NE are overpowered but everytime someone goes over their units and strats they usually go like "well, NE heroes suck, NE units suck, NE has no damage and no defense and no healing... wait why do NE have such a high WR again?"
Answer: tavern and fast expo gimmicks. How often does NE win on equal bases with just having to select from altar heroes?
Hello Grubby, I would like to disagree, I was 2006 WCG player of WC3 in my country. We used Glave throwers with POTM+KOTG hero, rush precision aura lvl2 and get all damage upgrades in Huntress hall and rush t2 for splash upgrade, You would use Mass grave throwers against Night elf mirror, because mass glave throwers counter mass bears, shoot and move back. Also, on certain bigger maps same strat against orcs with certain timing, if orcs dont go air Wyverns.
Make races soundtrack tier list, please! :D Night Elves will be S for sure!
I know Huntress isn't good, but wowie is it one of my favorite units. Such a cool concept.
Archers cannot fit through tight spaces while footman and ghoul can.
I realised this after I saw a woman get stuck on a fence...
Old Blizzard is very thorough in their design.
I fully expected Grubby to gaslight Night Elf into thinking bears and dryads are C tier in an attempt to change the meta. Great job Grubby, loved all your explanations and the addition of hippo riders!
Weird, back in the day I played Archer-Talons and later mounted Archers (hyppogryph riders) because health pool matters a lot.
Imagine getting marine with 3x its hp that can fly.
I guess a lot changed during the last 15 years LOL.
Fairy dragons are Acher cost slightly less than archer damage but slightly more health. Same 2 population, fliers, less range. POtM aura fits them too. Would love to see more of them played some day.
Can't believe bears were snubbed from the s tier
I assumed that Archer would be tier A because most games i've seen with Nelf have so many uses for archer. Or at least i thought. But then again im not a professional
Bears are vulnerable to feedback and mana burn because of their mana pool, unlike other tier 3 meele. Arcane towers are popular among Humans.
It all makes sense now! Archimond was summoned into this world and the whisps deal damage to summonables. That's why they could kill him. [Bruh in Darnassian]
Night elf is a bit odd.
Archer, dryad and bears are pretty good forming their main strategy against most. Then they have some stuff like mass dott vs Orc, faerie dragons vs Us etc but most units are pretty niche.
Their heroes aren't the best either, basically lacking a good aura which other races do have.
However their macro mechanics like aow creeping, expansions and moonwells are the strongest overall. They have the cheapest expansion that's hardest to raid, some of the best creeping and a base defense mechanic that's super useful even if you aren't attacked unlike the other civs. Also their shop is probably the best with the best staff and best orb I think which compensate for their subpar units and heroes.
Really depressing. Elf has so much untapped potential that we'll never see realized because we are way past the time where re-works and bigger balance changes are a thing.
I wish huntresses were better... So many issues coming from not able to have 1 scaling Frontline. Units should be viable longer.
Rifles are scalable even to lategame. Which is annoying. If you're NE vs Hu or vs UD, then fiends and rifles can be carried to the lategame, so u can pump them out and creep with no issues. But the NE needs to trade out his hunts or he will be in a massive deficit. They also creep worse because of lower damage.
the problem is, hunts were TOO good. they were the fastest, had aoe. blizzard tried to fix them by making them unarmored, but this just means they become useless to straight up liability after the first 10 minutes.
I played Warcraft 18-20 years ago and when I saw that the enemy made 6-8 dryads, I realized that I won. These are the favorite units of players who overestimated their abilities.
Despite all their features and capabilities, these are really weak units in terms of characteristics. Yes, they can do wonders, but this requires a developed micro and great understanding of strategy. Knitting does not work if enemy refuses to play in your game and simply go to the base with superior force and win.
Every basic range unit is counter to dryads, and not only due to the armor/attack types, but because they just bad with their hp and damage numbers.
I wanna try wc3 and this makes me sad. I like NE, but from the comments here I take it they would be trash in the hands of the beginner who can't use staff of preservation, and doesn't creep with ancient of war. What does healing with the moon well matter if your weak unit goes back in and just dies again
Archers are hot, that's why they're S tier for me personally
There's a reason why she's the poster girl in the campaign, haha
I think you said the Wisp damages summoned units twice and forgot that you didn't say that it subtracts mana from enemies in the area. Also, I wish Wisps had upgrades for detonate at tier 2 and tier 3. Would be so cool!
In the hero tier list Grubby said that Night Elf heroes were generally a little weaker (no S's) but they made up for it with their units. And now in the unit tier list they're all mostly in C. Unless Night Elf is clearly the worst faction, he's underrating them somewhere.
Other people are mentioning moon wells and that their shop is better.
NE has some gimmicks.
1) Your expansion can help creep for itself/your barracks can creep for your expansion.
2) Moonwells are pretty good and make otherwise underwhelming tavern heroes that much better. Basically, take any tavern hero and move them up a tier with elf =P
3) Staff of preservation is pretty good.
4) DH has an S tier combat ult on the only hero that gets built first. Archmage mass teleport? Not that great in 1v1. DK's raise dead? Meh. Farseer's EQ? LOL. Blademaster ult? Actually decent, but not metamorphosis good.
5) Your units can be garbage but if you have more of them than the opp, you can win.
6) Bear/dryad/archer =P
I still wonder how NE manages to keep up its FFA winrate though. This logic should state that NE is uniquely garbage when all players have lots of gold and full armies.
34:25 2005? What? I believe we were playing this strategy in the Internet cafe back in 2002 lol.
Funny thing is, RoC Hippo Riders were good, much better than TFT. First, Faerie Dragons didn't exist so there was no alternative general purpose air unit in the NE arsenal. Second, they were the only heavy air unit that was available in Tier 2. Wyverns and Gryphons required Tier 3 so they came out much later. I think they dealt more damage too, because Archers did more.
Hi Grub!
stone age -> industrial age is my kind of alt history.
The Twin Headed Dragons
Must be in F FOR KILLING MY OWN ARMY most of the time
Man I havent played the game for 10 years and for some reason, I enjoyed this very much.
Alternative title: Grubby realising nightelf is hard to play and regrets his hate for them. ^^
I always thought the Night Elves were unfinished. Even their RoC campaign was shorter than the other races and you didn't get access to all their units in the campaign. You never got to use the Chimera in the RoC campaign.
Sure, but we got TFT which allowed them to work on Night Elf more. But yes, compared to the other races, Night Elf feels a bit unfinished.
Night elf players are generally more skilled then players of other races, because without perfect execution elf loses every single matchup. It's very common sight when undead players dont even know their build, map, strategies and so on, just spam fiends and some frontline units, and win against night elf player who is trying their best. NE players know despair when only 3 unit types are usable, while rest are never a good choice. NE have to be better as a player to win, while Human can cheese, orc can outvalue with heroes, and undead can mash their face in keyboard and destroy elfs without any effort. I'm not speaking as a pro, but in my middle level of play it is noticeable difference between games on elf and other races. Hum Orc Und - normal game, NE - survival horror.
Quite interesting. I've heard top players say elf is easy to play but I am not familiar with mid level talks about elf being weak. I haven't played the game in awhile but the way I could maybe see the bridge in this gap between mid and high would be that fundamentals are most important on elf maybe. Like a top player will have the fundamentals down so it would feel natural to play elf, while when you're still on that learning curve you're punished harder. IDK if it's true that elf is weak at mid tier btw.
Perhaps having options to so many good but situational counter units means that NE has an answer to everything, so they are strong because they can react to most strategies? I think that could explain why a race full of tier C units feels so powerful.
Except that's not quite true. The C units are fairly situational, and because armies aren't composed of just ONE type of unit, the "specialized" counter units also quickly get outscaled. For instance, you'd think Druids of the Talon might counter tauren with cyclone, right? Well, not so fast if spirit walkers are there to dispel it. Or faerie dragons countering autocasting inner fire priests or bloodlusting shamans? Too bad, your opponent pre-buffed.
A proper counter unit needs to also just be good standalone in a general mixed composition, and many NE units just *aren't*. It's why elf often has to rely on gimmicks like ancient of war creeping or fast expo to be up a base on an opponent and just grind them down by attrition of much, MUCH worse units, and why people generally say that elf loses against most other races on an equal base setting.
how does ne counter mass gargs? mass gyros? triple orc hero high level? mass steam engines? mass summons? mass bats?.... (dont include neutral heroes as they are not nelf).... they are only balanced during a certain time frame of early to mid game where micro and maneuver tactics still apply
@@mavingamos8771 If your heroes are weaker than opponet you are basically doomed as nelf, units are just simply worse so if you didnt established win before certain time you get rekt. I have no clue how to siege as nefl coz everythign siegewise is so utterly bad. Funy enough my best sige attempts are usually with lvl6 DH
great video! loved the unexpected dry humor and puns haha
Next video -winning with only glaive throwers hipporiders and ancient of wars
The editing is fire on that one. Cudos to the editor
I'd put the bear in S+ (best unit in the game) and dryands at a at best.
The thing is, of you gave bears to any other race, they'd use it and would gain a lot.
Dryads are only useful due to dispell, their stats are just abysmal for 3 supply. Yes, they are fast and have magic immunity, but no armor and no health makes them still die like flies.
Ehhh, not sure about "best units in the game" on bears. I'd much, MUCH rather have tauren, because against spellbreakers, you *HAVE* to deplete your bears' mana, and then they absolutely gobble up moonwell mana b/c moonwells healing mana is SO awful.
Aboms/knights: not sure about aboms, but knights have EXCEPTIONALLY high armor, which would make them terrific heavy melee units for elf since they'd gain so much from wells.
Druids of the Claw are very solid units, IMO, but I wouldn't say they're supreme.
@@Ilyak1986 Tauren are stronger in a mass fight, but they cost more and as grubby pointed out, are useless outside of combat. They are also weaker against buildings, tho that's niche.
And yes, spell breakers destroy bears mana, but their own health will be depleeded even faster
@@pinthecool1 "useless outside of combat" basically applies to...every unit without a heal, or workers. So, I don't think that's saying much. And I'm not sure I want to use my *melee* units against buildings in games in which my opponent has proper static defenses.
@@Ilyak1986 1. Yes, thus every unit is a bit worse than bear, right?
2. You don't want to go for siege, especially on elf, you'd rather brute force with bears. Also base races exist
What if Hippos were 1 pop? Other idea I had was if Hippos had a very high natural health regeneration outside of combat, so Hippo Riders gained that benefit, and also the benefit of Elune's Grace, so they'd be a spell resistant, robust unit that didn't eat up as much moon well healing. Probably too powerful, heh.
Glaivethrowers only challenge would be hilariously bad.
grubby tier S genuine streamer
This is really helpful thanks Grubby
Thanks a lot Grubby! great content keep it up!
15:35 Not being a creep or anything but I could have sworn dryads don't wear bras many years before
I think if we were to add buildings to the tier lists, moon wells would need their own tier above S. Night elf is allowed to have below average quality in its heroes and units solely because they also have moon wells.
To put it another way, imagine any unit in the game could be given to another race. As interesting as a lot of these scenarios would be, I don't think any of them would completely break the game to make one race vastly superior to all others because it has access to one extra unit. Now imagine any other race having access to moon wells - that, I think, would totally break the game.
Hippogryph Riders have 100 LESS range than archers btw
Also I do think Moon Wells, Ancient of War, Wisps (scouting, dispel), Staff (combined with wells), are the main reasons Nelf is good. I've thought this for a while that Nelf's Heroes are not great and only have two particularly good units in Dyrad and Bears.
The entire problem with nelf is being outscaled the longer the game goes on. No air prevention, nelf base is rather weak, tower are joke compared to human/orc or even UD. There are 2 good units being dryad and bears. Dryads being so little hp and no armor makes themvery vulerable lategame
It is also funny in Hearthstone game that Druid of the Claw is now just as solid as the WC3 version. Earlier, it was 4/4 with Rush in cat form, and 5/6 in bear form with Taunt, kinda garbage for a 5 mana cost minion. Now they are 5/7 cat and 6/9 bear. Cheers