4 replies to this topic

[Mex_Flaxtz]

Hi, i wanna open this topic as a summary of why i feel mordor has many drawbacks compared to the rest factions. I make a list of the balance topics mordor can bring:

 

- No early cavalry: Early game mordor doesnt have any deal for archer spam.

 

- Limited cavalry until very late game: Nazgul horses do well only mid game because if u buy them early they cost a lot and have no damage to harrash, on the other hand on late game they die too easy to strong archers. To solve this u can only go rhun horses that are hardly blocked (in case u go for that pp way) or get morgul spire. Both options are pretty bad cost-efficience and very late game things.

 

- Weak early: The idea of mordor is to get cheap early units that enable u to make the transitions, the problem is mordor cant resist well only with basic orcs and trolls vs many early armies. Units are all too slow and have very low damage, trolls dont do well enough at fights for the amount of money they cost.

 

- Very expensive early transitions: No transition but black uruks is viable in time or money:

• Nazguls: Its much harder to spend 1300 one time than to spend 500+500 in stables and a normal horse for a similar purpose, even more early.
• Harad archers: Its 600+750+650=2000 money and more than 2 minutes to get 1 archer. Considering men of khand is a unit with not a clear purpose and having the much much cheaper black uruks... it makes the rhun tech up even a worse option. Its a quite expensive building and lv 1 it doesnt even offer the rhun pikes
• Drummer trolls: This is a good unit but the units u would buff early game are not good enough vs many armies, even if buffed. Drummer troll works much better mid-late game with rhun support and stronger units.

- Hardly blocked late game: Most games you dont have enough time to get to see the very good units mordor has. Its more a question of time and how blocked they are rather than not having money for them. U have industry and a lot of money but by the time u get them u cant stand the opponent´s army attacks and u end up loosing.

 

- Bad heroes  (Mouth and Gothmog are the only good heroes): 

 

• Nazguls: It has barely no damage and its too expensive, its armour makes him horrible dismounted and it needs very expensive fort upgrades to resist late game.
• Shagrat: The powers he has are just too bad, weak and very specific buffs and he has no damage.
• Gorbag: Totally useless as he is right now.
• Mollock: Its a very good hero but too big to resist in battles late game. He has same armour as any other 3000 cost hero being 8 times bigger.
• Wk: He has an incredible debuff, but its the only good thing he offers until very high levels as vs most factions he becomes too bad if mounted. Also 1000 cost more than the other expensive faction leaders.

- Nothing but horribly late game barbed arrows archers works well vs heroes

 

 

 

 

Now I suggest possible solutions:

 

- No early cavalry:  I would make nazgul cost 1000, i would remove some abilities and nerf their armour, besides i would add them a bit more damage vs buildings and a considerable dmg vs heroes to work better as hero killers. I would buff their armour dismounted as now they seem to be like Thrain in battles.

 

- Limited cavalry until very late game: I would add 1 more 1000 cost nazgul hero and put spire as a separate power from morgul upgrade. This way it would be 1500 to buff nazguls and 1500+2000 to get morgul vanguard (still quite expensive to buy them but now worth it to get them directly)

 

- Weak early: I would rework men of khand and make palace lv1 much cheaper (300-400 cost). I would make them fast, with a good attack stat and low armour (good armour only vs archers if nazguls remain 1300), also reduce their price to 400. Similar in behaviour to bfme2 corsairs.

 

- Very expensive early transitions & Hardly blocked late game: With the changes mentioned before this shouldnt such as big problem as he is now, still, I would make it faster the fort upgrades and a bit faster the buildings upgrades to avoid the problem of losing too much time upgrading. Also very important to make morgul orcs come from orcpitts so that fort dont assume too much functions (maybe orcpitts lv 2 or 3).

 

- Bad heroes:

• Nazguls: Read the solution to "No early cavalry"
• Shagrat: I would make him not so specific of black orcs only and change the first active ability.
• Gorbag: Big rework, i like him to be a fast hero of 500-700 cost. Low armour, big damage and 1 or 2 anti hero powers, no more.
• Wk: I would change the screech and morgul´s blade for more useful abilites and reduce its cost to 4000 or 4500 as he doesnt offer much more than other faction leaders.

- Nothing but horribly late game barbed arrows archers works well vs heroes: With faster khand, the gorbag i mentioned and nazguls with more hero dmg it wouldnt be a problem to deal with heroes.

 

 

 

I know its a long text, that not every problem has to be solved and obviously not in the way i said but i see 2 as the most important for balance and for me its a must to change them. One is the deficit on anti archer purpose and the other is how hard is to deal enemy heroes. 

 

Thanks a lot for reading this and feel free to write whatever u consider.

 

[Wert_eh]

hi, after plaling against your mordor, id say you make some crucially wrong things. 

 

firstly, throw black uruks into trash can and build extra barrack instead of grading it. why? because hordge bonus, you need that 50% dmg bonus on your archers and such. so, general idea of mordor army is huge blob of archers, few spears behind the army(cause they are paper-thin) and bunch of cheap orcs getting constantly re-spammed, and dont split it(!). The only thing that can do good damage in that army is archer blob with their hordge bonus, rest is just a distraction. "melee"-focused mordor army just doesnt work, it gets wrecked. 

 

in-general.

So, the big problem of mordor is slow start and vulnerability to getting "rushed". early troll can help with that, but only partially and against some factions you really dont want to spend money on trolls.

why so? cause you need like 4-5 barracks to keep up withother factions 2, also need troll cage or seige works cause orcs are really meh against buildings like forwardish barracks and such.

without hordge bonus orcs do seem to trade downwards. like, 3 mordor orcs can trade with 1 lamedon while being slightly cheaper(i hope they can), but it takes far longer to make these 3 orcs and that trade wont be fast. orc archers and pikes are noticably squishier than those from other factions and cannot be on the reciving end at all, need more protection that usual, which cant be avoided early on. it takes more to convert money into army so-to-say. On bigger maps its not that big but on smallish maps its important.

Extreame example of that is wr woodsmen rush against mordor, mordor cannot do anything against such, orc archers get outshooted in archer 1v1 by woodsmen, melee orcs get deleted in second. and then happens quick deletion of all mordor farms. Yes, woodsmen are notoriosly overbuffed/op but only mordor gets wrecked that hard by it. woodsmen rush can be countered by cav start too, but mordor cant get nazgul in time, and even with nazgul, woodsmen + silvan spear finsih whats left after initial wave of woodsmen.

 

regarding heroes. i hard disagree that Wk is bad and doesnt provide anything more than other leaders. firstly, he fliyes and thats big. but also he is much tankier and his usefullnes comes from his melee, not abilites. so, he is far harder to counter and you cannot missuse him unlike saruman or gandalf for example. on that note, its rather hard to make saruman work without any stuns in factions. also, wk abilites were shown to be changed, so...

nazgul are pretty good, early terror can be pretty nasty, so is debuff. you really think removing smth of this will help mordor?

gorbag is said to be buffed

yes, shagrat trash, his summon is very uncomfortable to use, and thats his main selling point. his buffs to black orcs are meh while black orcs themsleves are suboptimal and remain so even with shagrat. his buff to archers is just meh. would be nice if shagrat buffed black orcs better, like +50% instead of +25% armour at some level, same about his ability that adds bonus damage to blorcs. with his cost revert if needed, but doubt it will.

Yes, mollok gets wrecked easily by enemy archers and heroes. but thats part of his role, pin-cusion with big splash, i suppose armour increase against heroes wont hurt but if he gets tankeir overall it would be cursed. he is doomed to remain niche.

 

i suppose throwing a lot of money and time on bunch of grades to get good units is part of faction idea. like easterlings, gorgoroths, ologs, gothmog. whats wierd is that units you get arent that good by the time you get them. like, ologs can be nice mid game when opponent doesnt have consolidated army but walls grade and lvl3 cage itself are enought to give opponent both time and money advantage to get an army, get grades and such. and ologs are trash against late-game army. same about gorgoroths who get deleted in seconds by archers with arrow grade. and they will have it by time mordor gets ologs and great beasts. you'd think that "pay-walls" stop faction from rushing op late-game, but mordor late game is mediocore compared to a lot of factions. overall conclision: spam basic orcs, instead of wierd late units get WK.

[Mex_Flaxtz]

Yeh, its true i play mordor on an aggresive stile and sure it doesnt work well. As u say u want to spam archers until u get that bonus but i cant see the point of it as the other faction can also spam archers and mordor will lose that archer fight, if the oponnent notices of ur intentions. Maybe its a "good way" to play early mordor but im unable to see it.

 

The mentioned thing from nazgul, is not a buff nor a nerf, its a change. For a healthy balance u cant keep same abilities and stats lowering their price to 1000, thats why my idea is nerfing them in general to have an earlier and cheaper cav unit availible and solve that problem. If u read it well it has a balance sense.

 

I also overtalked about some heroes such as wk, maybe its not a thing about the heroes themselves but about the weak army that goes with them, i must say sorry for that. 

 

On the rest of the things i can see we agree, maybe we dont have exactly the same ideas but we have similar points of what doesnt work. As u say, mordor has great units but by the time u get them the opponent has been able to get much more.

[kmogon]

Nazgul are perfect heroes currently and ideal cavalry force. They indeed need more micro to be used well, but they are very effective and posses tools that disrupt enemy forces. Their price is fine especially that mordor have pretty good early game units for their price.
The army composition is the key here and you cannot expect a win by just spamming basic orcs. Archers are always your main source of damage and can be very deadly when in groups, also making it harder for cav to properly counter them.
As for expensive locks, they are part of mordor gameplay, justified by low cost of your meantshield units

[Mex_Flaxtz]

Hi Kmogon, i will try to go archer spam and not splitting my army and see how it goes. Its quite strange way to play mordor for me but its true i tend to be agressive