Combat is where the victor of the match is decided. Good players understand the ideas behind a combat and can make use of every single aspect of it. Warcraft III is unique in the sense that it has a beautiful combat system indluenced by plenty of factors that can easily be witnessed in real life situations. Let’s break down a combat scene into several aspects. They are;

- Army size
- Unit composition
- Battlefield
- Heroes
- Unit control

Army Size
Probably the most basic laws of all, the army with greater numbers wins the fight. However, there’s a way around this idea. Especially in team games, where army sizes plays probably the greatest role of all. There’s a simple idea that goes: you need quantity when you’re defending, but you need quality when you’re attacking

When a teammate is under attack, check on him, and just make your way there in case he can’t handle it alone. A blademaster is probably a nightelf’s worst nightmare, since not that many people could get their hands on some dust to scare off the BM. It’s all too obvious to get out og combat when you’re out numbered and wait for your teammates.

When attacking, however, it’s not always a good idea to charge in a huge army. When attacking, decide on a clear-cut objective, say ‘waste their TP’ or ‘kill the towers first’. Be prepared, and try to keep at least one teammate avaible to TP home in case your base gets hit, but you’re still on the way to theirs.

Unit composition
This is surely the most important aspect of the game. What units you make are greatly influenced by your playing style. However, you can’t afford to go on a rigid one-track strategy all the way. This is simply because in Wrcraft, there is no ‘perfect’ strategy, especially in team games. Each strategy you could possibly think of has at least ONE solid counter.

In team games, a good way is to let one player take on one role. Let’s see what roles are available:
- meat shields
- ranged aka anti-air
- casters
- late-tech
- air [optional]
- siege [optional]

Always make sure your team covers at least the top 3 roles, as they are the most curcial of all. This is where quality counts. Sure, to let everyone get ranged MIGHT be a good idea, but a group of Mountain Giants or Taurens and Walkers could easily walk over them. Remember everything has a solid counter to it.

Battlefield
A good practice to adopt is to understand maps. Learn what creeps occupy which camps, and make sure you understand where the evelations, the forests and the resources are.

Air units can take advantage of cliffs and forests to escape. A bunch of hippogryphs that have upgraded range and can easily harass wood peons and escape when the ground based anti-air arrives.

When fighting avoid being on low ground. A common mistake players make is when fighting on a slope. Units on high ground have greater advantaged over the ones on lower ground. First, the ones on lower ground do not have vision of anything on higher ground unless their units up there attack. The units on lower ground have chance to miss their attacks when hitting units on higher ground. This is really bad especially if you’re fighting on a ramp outside the enemy base [like on Lost Temple, for example].

Another thing you can take advantage of is creep-jacking. This requires a fair bit of scouting and timing, and [especially] luck. When you see the opponent in combat, [usually against orange creep camps] AMBUSH! They will be snadwiched between the creeps fighting them and you behind them. Their only choice is to run. In case it happens to you, TP out immediately.

Heroes
Heroes are the queen piees in combat. And like everything else, each hero has hard counter. When deciding on a hero, decide on one that complements your units best. A Bloodmage isn’t much help to a bunch of footies, nor does Tinker do much for a group of fiends. Skill selection is important, too.

AoE spells like blizzard/flamestrike arent really useful during melee combat because you risk injuring your own units. Such spells are better aimed at enemy ranged units. A common mistake made is usually on the target acquisiotn of spells. Hero spells, when used in combination, can be extremely powerful. Let’s look at some of the common combos;
- FS+TC Chainwave; great against huge numbers of ghouls, footies or archers
- DK+Lich Novacoil; take down high HP units one by one, or kill off a weak int/agi hero in 2 blasts
- FS+Naga dual lighting; again, great on huge numbers of tier 1’s
- MK+bloodmage banishbolt; not only does this increase the ctorm bolt’s damage, it also slows down the target for a period time

In team games, combining the above mentioned combo’s could turn the tables over in an instant. Combine banishbolt+novacoil and you can easily kill off that annoying KOTG. Make sure you aim your spells well. Your priority should be as follows; air > siege > casters > low hp units/hero > range > melee.

Unit control
The basics of battle must not be forgotten. Melee units in front, ranged units behind. Here’s a basic formation chart;

As you can see, I placed the melee hero at the sidemost of the melee line. Why? A common mistake is to have the melee hero charge i front row center. This could be a fatal mistake, because he will be the first absorb a LOT of damage, thus dies easily if he doesn’t escape. This happens very often with mountain kings and death knights. Too often they charge way in the middle and can’t get out because of the units blocking behind him. Letting him stay at the side allows ease of escape, as well as maximising the effects of certain spells like shockwave, BoF or swarm.

Unit control plays alot around the term micro-management, commonly known as microing, which basically means treating your units as an indivual and using them to optimise their ability and survival. The simplest form of micro management is focus fire. That simply means having all of your units attack a single target, bringing it down very quickly. The counter to focus fire, is known as dancing. Basically it means, if you see a unit is under focus fire, you take it, send it out of combat. What does this do? In Wacraft, units only attack when they’re not moving. Simply meaning, the moment they move, they are not attacking. Dancing effectively counter focus fire; here’s a simple scenario.

Let’s say you and your opponent each have a MK and 4 footies. The enemy MK bolts a footie, and send his other 4 to attack it. This could easily bring down that particular footies health below 50%. But, when you move him out of battles, the enemy units will chase it, thus, making them effectively not fighting. Unless, of course, he decides to switch targets, which counters dancing. This is the situation where the one with the better micro wins the match.

Another aspect of unit control is that of target acquisition. Again, let’s repeat the same situation of 4 footies and a MK on both sides. Given the choice, who would focus on first; the MK or one of the foooties? That’s right, target the footies first because they die faster than the MK. What if its a bit different, say your MK and 4 footies, vs a lich and 4 ghouls? Yep, you kill the lich first, simply because it dies easier than the ghoul.

Target acquisition plays around the idea of reducing the enemy army’s potential against you. When in combat, always try to get rid of air first before anything else, mainly ecause they have low armor, but have a high combat advantage. Take them down first [when possible], and then worry about the rest. This involves a bit of math, really. You should always, always try your best to get rid of units that are hard counters to yours. e.g, get rid of catapults or rifles if you have hunts, get rid of detroyers or gryphons if you have lusted taurens. You get the idea. To have a good sense of targetting, you only have the choice of watching replays, or playing more games.

That’s all for part 4! Next up will discuss more issues to improve your game :D

“IF Bloodmage was the best hero in the game, and IF it was feasible for Human to tech to tier 3 with only 1 Guard Tower and no Footmen and mass Flying Machines, Angry_Korea_Man would win everything.

However, this would not be so impressive, because that’s all he does. If you do only 1 thing which happens to be best, you can win a lot but it’s not creativity or micro that’s awarded, but doing the right strategy even if it obviously won’t work, it will still be done and in some cases it does work. The strategy can just be seen from a replay so it’s nothing more than tracing the lines fo a picture, whereas the true wc3 master is like an artist, a picasso, or rembrandt, and many less known but still talented painters.”

-Manuel “4K.Grubby” Schenkhuizen

Yes, Warcraft 3 is indeed an art. As was Starcraft. This is THE beautiful game.

Now that we’ve discussed the ground rules, let’s move on to the more technical stuff.

3. Strategy

There’s already a HUGE variety of builds available for solo matches. Now, imagine the kind of mixture you can get out of team games, if you consider the possible combinations, the strategies involved are practically UNLIMITED. However, not all of them work, while some are easy to execute, and others may take more skill to achieve the desired results.

Mistakes:
- Sticking to only ONE build per race, and resort only to rushing every single game
- Go ahead of your team without telling them
- TP when you could just run, and run when you should TP.

Of course, there’s your usual “one-player-one-role” build that lets teammates complement each others army, e.g X builds melee and Y builds ranged. However, this is never the perfect strategy that one should always go by. Main reason is because it’s easily countered, which you should be able to think of yourself [I'm sure of that]. What I’ll discuss here are some builds that makes team games a shitload of fun.

The Mass Snake Ward Rush

Requirements: Shadow Hunters [everyone], each player brings along 2-3 grunts.
Main targets: NE and Human bases, it’s a bit difficult on Orcs, and a lot harder on UD base.

How:
Simple. Everyone gets 2-3 grunts and a SH each, and all the SH will have serpent ward as their first skill. By the time the first night approaches, you should be on your way to an enemy base. The moment you get sight of the first building, EVERYONE should start sticking their wards. Keep spamming wards everywhere around the base. Keep your SH dancing around and let your grunts pound whatever building closest to it. If you could get to lvl2, 2 SH’s should get healing, and the other one, hex [In 2v2, one heals, one hexes]. Max out your secondary skills because after the rush, the wards won’t contribute much anymore.

Wards have a very short cooldown, and only cost 30 mana.
A single SH can have up to 4 wards attacking for a period of time.
In this 3v3, we had over 10 wards attacking at the same time, and they constantly
roll around so the total damage is always consistent throughout the rush

Try to kill as much units and/or buildings as you can, especially food buildings [farms, wells, burrows] as this will limit their unit production. Agi and Int hero fall fast with this attack. After the rush, one should get catapults, one goes pure melee, another one trolls and casters, preferably docs to stun.

Counters:
- Nukes bring down SH’s fast, as their starting HP are low. Bolt/Coil/Nova on one SH at a time to quickly bring their HP to red and that should deter them away.
- Stun and surround bring SH’s down VERY fast.
- Focus fire will bring down the wards fast, too. Use ranged units and/or towers/burrows to quickly get rid of them. Wards cannot be aimed and they attack the closest target they can find [I'm not sure abt their target priority, though. I know it's something like units > hero > buildings, though].
- Manaburn/Detonation pretty much limits the number of wards the SH’s can cast, but this is the most difficult counter to do.

Secret Siege Attack

Requirements: 3v3, Enemy did not rush, Scroll of Speed and/or TP, at least 8 Raiders with pillage, any hero, preferably Blademaster/Tauren Chieftain
Main Targets: All main halls except UD. UD would be pretty hard.

How:
This is probably one of the most exciting strategies to play by because you would be playing on the edge. If you’re going to play the raiders, you will have to tech fast to tier 2 and have some sort of defense. Let your teammates build to complement each other. In this build, timing will be your winning token. The aim is simple, but effective: destroy the main hall under 10 seconds.

The driving point behind this build lies within the Raider,
- it runs fast
- it has a Siege type attack [bonus dmg against most buildings]
- it’s small and can fit through narrow gaps

To get this build to work, you will need to time your attacks at crucial moments. First of all, do some recon to find out where your enemy’s bulk of forces are. The first thing you want to achieve is to get them as far away as possible from your target building. A simple trick is to let your allies have speed scrolls so they can attempt a hit and run. Let the bulk of the enemy chase them.

The red circle is where my base is; it’s under attack, and an ally is helping me.
The blue circle is where the raiders are, and they’re almost there.

Once you’re sure they’re on their way to attack your allies, move out, and choose your route carefully. The moment the enemy engages in combat, move inside, surround your target building first. Use the M-key to move instead of right clicking your target [which causes them to attack it too soon]. Once you have at least 5 raiders around the building, strike it! With 8 raiders, you should be able to take it down under 8 seconds.Once that’s done, kill off a barracks, maximum 2 more buildings before you use your speed/TP scroll to get out and heal.

Rinse and repeat when you get the chance. Of course, there variations with mortars, tanks, and bats, but they basically revolves around the same idea. Zeppelin drops were a classic but with the current version, I wonder if it’s still viable.

Counters:
- If you get rushed, then it’s practically over for you because you won’t be able to mass the raiders in time.
- Sentry wards or shades wandering the map could reveal your raiders running to the expected target, a quick TP should repel, if not totally kill off the group as raiders as very low in HP and are easily killed by chainwave or novacoil nukes.
- UD bases are usually designed such that their ziggs cover their main, and the ziggs are then covered by crypt, altar and other buildings. Its towers also have a frost attack.

Beetles+Skellies FTW

Requirements: At least 1 Crypt Lord with beetles carrying the Necro Rod, the more the merrier. The CL should have around 4-5 ghouls with him. Oh, and each hero should have a Necro Rod if possible.

Target: Orcs or UD, HU arcanes will hurt you alot, and NE wisps too.

How:
This is probably the second easiest rush to do next to the mass wards rush. What you do, is get the crypt lords to have 5 beetles, and a few ghouls. Meet up and rush an enemy base. Yes, it’s that simple but that’s not enough to win. What should happen, is to always keep a finger on the Necro Rod hotkey. The moment something dies, just click it, and don’t stop until you get to cast it.

What happens? When something dies, be it yours or an enemy unit, 2 more skeletons will rise to YOUR side. The units circled in red are the ones I summoned in no time. Also keep casting beetles while the rod recharges. With some decent micro, you can bring down a whole base in one rush.

Counters:
- Wisps can detonate to wuickly get rid of the skellies and beetles in one shot rendering all your efforts pointless
- HU arcane towers do extra damage against summons and burns your mana via feedback
- Proper base design can fend this attack off quite well, if they can’t get inside, you can blizzard them at will
- Mass wards should be able to put you on level ground, but if your SH gets surrounded, its over.

That covers part 3, the next part should feature something more detailed and specific!

Moving on to the second instalment, today we’ll continue on to more mistakes and things which you could have done to win a game.

2. Communication

It’s obvious the difference in what brings the win in solo and team games. It’s something called teamwork. When in a team, talk to your teammate[s]. Don’t keep quiet. It’s really that simple. It usually goes something like this;

In that quick conversation, my team easily accomplished several things;

- break the ice
- you get to decide what you will contribute to the team [air, siege, melee, range or casters]
- amend a prior build you have in mind to fit your teams needs
- decide on an attack plan

That only the first advantage. What if you take it a bit further, as demonstrated below;

See? Not only did we accomplish the things in the first list, we even went ahead to psyche the enemy team. In case you’re still blur as to what happened, here’s a step-by-step narration [this is at Rice Fields]:

- We communicated between Allies and no information gets leaked out
- hamzah hit Shift+Enter [instead of just Enter] to display his message to All, letting everyone [including the enemy team] know his ‘plans’.
- We resumed to laugh to ourselves
- I played along by saying to everyone again, scolding hamzah for ‘being a noob to let the enemy know our plans’.

Here’s the catch;
1. hamzah was UD, and an UD player rarely [if ever] does a tower rush
2. we didn’t do the tower rush, but hamzah went ahead to tech while ksilver and I attacked the upper left base.

We won because the fools believed us and concentrated their forces there [ksilver sent a peon to scout] and we killed over 5 peons before they arrived. By then, hamzah already has a decent army, and we pushed the bottom left base flat in no time.

And communicating isn’t limited to early game chatting, it must be done throughout the game.
- Alert an enemy presence if your team [or teammates] to be walking into an ambush.
- use the minimap signal [aka pinging] to show specific locations
- be prepared to amend your build, and let your team know beforehand
- don’t be afraid to ask your teammate[s] to amend their build, but make sure it’s sensible and fits the situation
- ask to be healed, or offer to heal
- request that they bring/buy certain items [speed/protection/healing scrolls are invaluable in teams]

Oh, I’d like to make an important point when it comes to pinging. Don’t abuse it. If you want to point to a location to gather/attack, ping once, maximum twice. Only ping like crazy when you’re desperate, i.e;
- your base is under attack, and request that they TP to help NOW NOW NOW
- you [or your teammates] get creep-jacked
- you’re attacking a base, and you spot enemy reinforcements coming from behind

Simply put, use it IF and ONLY IF it’s a drastic emergency. Otherwise, ping once. Unecessary multiple pings annoy the shit out of people. That wraps up this part of the guide. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make here is freaking simple.

Talk.

More to come in the next part!

I’m not exactly proud to be a lousy Warcraft 3 player, considering how much I suck at DOTA and even Melee games. This is mostly due to my lack of lightning fast reflexes and strategising creativity. It’s something I always have - and always will - acknowledge. HOWEVER, I’m no n00b, and I expect not to be taken lightly during games. [I don't mind losing, but I hate it when I win knowing that the opponent doesn't give his all].

From where I stand, I am completely clueless on how to win solo games consistently. But I do pride myself when it comes to team games. And today, I shal list down some mistakes that I made [and some you may have made yourself] and how to remedy those and raise the bar higher for yourself. Again, this is not a guide for pro’s to gain unique insights or whatever. I wrote this for mediocre players who wish to improve or n00bs who wish to see wheere they went wrong. Now, let’s get started shall we?

1. Base design.

Avoid placing buildings where you may create a completely enclosed ring [aka donut]. It’s not only an impractical design, but also horribly dangerous. Imagine if you or your ally TPs to save you, and find themselves stuck in the donut, they’re completely vulnerable [put catapults/blizzard/flamestrike into the scene] with nowhere to escape. A good base design has good ‘ventilation’, meaning there are decent routes for your to easily get in/out, and form chokepoints that you can use to your advantage. A simple example is like below

The red arrow show the paths where units can easily pass through, but only a limited number at a time. When running, though, units usually run in a line, so this isn’t really a problem as they march straight inside. The blue circles indicate choke points [which will be discussed in a moment]. Observe the example below. Its a post-rush scene, I just lost my AM, and ordered my few surviving troops make their way into base.

This sort of design is also very useful when defending an attack, and the upperhand gained by taking advantage of a chokepoint can be seen below.

As you can see, the grunts are too fat to fit through that path, and have to queue up to get through, only to get blocked by some militia. I find it weird he didn’t back off and use the other route to get inside, but instead let his grunts push on and get killed off.

This another example of the chokepoint abuse, but this might be a mistake you might make yourself. The FS was desperately chasing a rifleman that needed only one more hit to die, but he was too late and too deep, and his exit got blocked by some militias [again], and dies.

For NE, a good base design should allow you to maximise your natural defense capabilities, i.e. wells and ancients. Now that ancients can attack even when rooted, take advantage of it. A simple example as below [not exactly perfect, but you get the idea];

Again, the red arrows show the paths and the blue circles, the major chokepoints. Imagine the grunt situation just now, they would be beaten senseless by the ancients if they tried to make their way through. While that happens, and during the night [which is the usual time you get rushed] you can put your wells on auto cast as your archers/hunts fire back at them. That should be enough to scare them off, if not wipe them up good. Of course, it’s usually 2 AoWars if its an early defense, but you get the idea. [in case you're wondering, that defense never did came to work because we fought against a rangecrafting army, lol. But we won, though not because of the base design :)].

For orcs and UD, it basically the same for both. cover your burrows/ziggs with tough buildings like a barracks/crypt or altar. Also, try to have them positioned so that their attack range covers the area for both your gold and [especially] wood workers, in case some gay blademaster or AM decide to harass early.

That rounds up the first part of this series, more to come, soon!