Mordor Balance Discussion

[Aiphaton]

Hey guys, as already proposed on the Discord-Server of the Edain Fight Club I'd like to add a concept on how to change Mordor's Eco to balance it a little more compared to different factions.

Right now I believe it is just way too much to get free eco upgrades next to all the other stuff that is free for Mordor.

I mean due to the fire power of towers baserushing mordor is also extremly hard and mordor has the highest Comeback possibility of all factions.

And I believe that this is also due to the free eco with sauron on level two.

Now I have two ideas concerning that Mordor specific issue. But I’d like to get some opinions here first before I make a post on the MU.

1. Delay the free upgrade to a later point of the game. In order to get an eco upgrade the Mordor player has to cast the influence of sauron on three buildings and has to keep those buildings in order for the first eco upgrade.

Benefit:
- this also makes it important for the player to decide wether or not to cast the influence early on on some outside building like CU because he might not be able to hold it
- next to this the eco upgrade is delayed and it‘s not as easy to just turtle around and get the eco upgrade to get all of the heroes next to the free Orcs and spellbook powers
In order to get eco to level three you have to upgrade another three buildings: now mapcontrol comes to play since you somehow need to influence slaughter houses and slavefarms in order to put the influence on so many buildings.

2. option unlock the option to upgrade eco for 1200 resources through the influence

I think this might also be a good option to weaken this power. Doesn’t change a thing compared to the system right now, but it has to be unlocked in order to research just like the eco of every other faction.
Benefit: takes just as long and costs the same as for every other faction while maintaining a unique concept which suits Mordor.

On top of that I got some feedback on the second option by Smeargollum who added that it might also be an idea to just reduce the upgrade costs to 600 - 800 res, since you already 'invest' by using Sauron's influence on the building.

I think that these two options would make for a way better gameplay with a less OP Mordor.
In terms of practibility I'd see option 2 as a nice touch, since option 1 isn't easy to implement and needs a lot of understanding which is especially hard to learn for new and casual players.

Best regards,
Aiphaton

[Spartacus_]

I am not sure about what you said : First of all I really don't think that eco upgrades for Mordor are "totally free", since usually you buy CU (800)+ CU unit (500/600) and one nazgul (1400). So like you see the eco upgrade isn't free at all. We can discuss about mordor beeing favoured since it doesn't need to invest on units so it can invest more in eco and heroes, but I totally disagree when you underline that Mordor has free eco upgrade.

I personally don't like both ideas : with those 2 Ideas you will directly nerf Mordor eg (it is already bad), and you will not nerf the real problem of Mordor: LATE game.

[Aiphaton]

But you do delay the lategame.

The EG goes unchanged.
And the costs for a nazgul (1300 instead of 1400 btw) and CU aren’t ‚just‘ for the eco but you directly benefit from them by getting heroes and super strong units.

So your arguments lack a little bit of punch in this matter.

Imo a delay of the eco might actually help with Mordor not being able to just camp and wait for the upgrade anymore.
Apart from that the EG stays unchanged. You can still use the influence of Sauron on different stuff which also helps mordor transition to a later point of the game.

[Smeargollum]

Hello together!
I agree that Mordor gets its eco upgrades too easy and too cheap. 
I don’t really like your first suggestion as it seems very complicated and it would also take too long to get the eco to level 2 then, in my opinion. But I think the second suggestion is great, when you use your influence on the building and then you can buy an upgrade there for ca. 600 and after it is done your eco levels. So the upgrade wouldn’t be free as it is now and it would take a bit longer, which would be really good in my opinion.

I really don't think that eco upgrades for Mordor are "totally free"

Sparta, ofc they are not totally free but as the stuff you need for Sauron level 3 is the strength of your army that doesn’t really count for me. You always want to get CU units and you always want to get a Nazgul anyways. And when you can get on top of that the eco upgrades that is too strong for me.
It would be like Gondor getting its level 2 eco for building some Gondor knights and getting Aragorn.
And I also agree with Aiphaton that this wouldn’t nerf the eg but delay the lg. Because the difficult phase, the eg, is already survived when you can get Sauron, a Nazgul and a CU barracks.
Probably that is not enough to fix Mordor but I think it is the first step in the right direction.   

Best regards
Smeargollum

[Seleukos I.]

I agree with Smeargollum. Making the Mordor player pay like 600, maybe a bit more, to upgrade his eco after casting the influence of Sauron should help balance Mordor's eco.

best regardes,
Seleukos I.

[Max_Power]

Hi everyone! I generally agree with the previous posts. In my personal experience, Mordor is getting the eco upgrades generally quicker than other factions. The cost is much cheaper, even taking into account Nazgul etc.

Let's calculate it: Most factions need around 600-1000 for the research building, and then 1200 per eco upgrade (around 4200-4600 in total).
Now, Mordor can pay 1300 for Nazgul, 1000 for Sauron, and 800+500 for CU unit (around 3500 in total). Mordor upgrades also "research" quicker due to infuence of Sauron cooldown time.

Besides the eco upgrades, after paying all that money most factions get the benefit of having a forge, whereas Mordor has a hero, elite units and other very useful hero that cannot die (as Smeargollum Said, it is the same as if Gondor would get their upgrades by buying Aragorn and Gondor cav or Rangers).

So the Mordor eco upgrades seem cheap for me, even free at their core. Making them have some cost and potential research time would be ok for me (not necessarly as high as other factions, could be a cheap-quick one). As Mordor is a faction with many other free features, I don't see them having eco problems either. If we want to keep that "free thematic motive" for Mordor (which I don't understand even from lore point, maybe besides the free orcs), then other changes should be done to achieve a similar effect (I can think of moving Influence of Sauron to level 4, but I am not sure I like it).

Now, Mordor has other problems that would remain the same, mainly their high contrast between nearly trash earlygame, and their megastronk lategame.
Butaybe it is better to make changes slowly, since a new patch might come soon with more changes.

[Aiphaton]

Hey guys,

another idea on another issue with Mordor‘s balance in the current patch:

Shelob.

While Shelob is extremly strong in the EG, she scales towards the later part of the match.

An idea to fix that might be the following:
- with every time Shelob spawns she gains two additional levels
- first time she spawns at level 3 with the tunnel-ability
- Second time at level 5
- third time at level 7 plus she can summon her breeded spiders
- fourth time at level 9
- from the fifth time on at level 10 with her full set of abilities

This would balance the very strong tier 2 spell and scale it throughout the entire match.
I don‘t think that this ability should be a hardcounter to so many abilities that early on.

Let me know what you think.
Aiphaton

[dgsgomes]

I agree that Shelob is extremy strong, but I would'nt nerf her (as a unit) either and I don't know if technically is possible to make her spell work with such a level system.

I personally would just increase her cooldown timer significantly, so player would need to think carefully in what moments are they going to deal more damage with her and in what moments using her would be a wasted potential.

However, a change is indeed required.

[Aiphaton]

A small edit:

In order for Shelob to keep her Herokiller-Role one could add the poison-sting on level 1 again which deals high damage vs heroes but isn’t applicable on untis.

Similar to Nazgul‘s morgul-Blade.

[The_Necromancer0]

I want discuss two things in this post: The Evil Men Summons and Aiphaton's Shelob suggestion.

Shelob
I think there's a good idea in the concept but it needs some changes, currently it's not very practical as it would require 28 minutes of summoning Shelob back to back to actually get her to full strength. I think the first step is to introduce small changes to Shelob in order balance her.

For this her spider web needs its cooldown increased, currently it is 30 seconds which allows it to be case 3 times during her 80 second time. I think it should be increased to 60 seconds, the reason is that increasing so will punish users that don't summon shelob in the right position to be able to use the web won't be able to use it a second time.

Secondly, for the suggested change. I would cut it down to only three summons instead of 5. This would cut down the time to only 14 minutes if you summon shelob back to back.

Evil Men
The evil men summons are very strong and it's quite easy to get their upgrade since the defence banner is a very useful tool. Some of these ideas are originally from kmog but I adapted them slightly. The idea is to nerf the summon and the fact that they can't really be scouted for.

• Every player should be able to hear the sound effect so they know that the reinforcements have been called
• The units take longer to arrive after the button has been clicked to allow for more of an error margin for the enemy
• Casting IoS on the defense banner no longer grants upgrades for all the summons instead a system is devised based on the amount of banner that have IoS, up to three:
• 0 banners: Summons don't have any upgrades
• 1 banner: Upgrades for summons are unlocked, they can be purchased by the player once they arrive on the field
• 2 banners: For this there are two possible effects:
  
  • Easterlings now arrive on the battlefield with their upgrades
  OR
  
  • Both summons now arrive on the battlefield with one upgrade (either heavy armour or forged blades)
• 3 banners: similarly, two possible effects
  
  • Haradrims now also arrive on the battlefield with their upgrades
  OR
  
  • Both summons now arrive on the battlefield with both upgrades

[Smeargollum]

Ok everyone, I think it is time to talk a bit about Mordor balance once again
First of all I have to say that I really like it that Mordor is no longer a base camping, q + a-move faction, but still there are some issues.
Right now Mordor is incredible strong in every phase of the game, not only in the late game but also in the early game.
In my opinion there are two things that make Mordor to this extremely strong faction even in the early game:

1. Trolls: They got a huge damage buff of roughly 30%, which is really a lot. With that buff they destroy swords, cavalry or even pikes when they don’t run into them (which can be just an engine related thing if they stop in time or not, not even speaking of off-host-delay). So all together trolls are in my opinion and in the opinion of many other player too strong at the moment because they just kill everything.
--> Solution: Undo the buff (which was imo not necessary since the reason why nobody built them in 4.5.2 was not that they are weak but that the game around it was bad for trolls).

2. Overseers: Even though I love the idea and mechanic of them I think that the buff is a bit too strong at the moment because you can just slaughter enemy units with units you didn’t even pay money for very early on in the game.
--> Solution: Weaken the buff of the overseers (not too much but just a little bit so that you can’t form an early battering ram off orcs with some trolls and crush certain factions).

I think with such changes Mordor would get weaker in the eg-mg which would allow the opponent to get in a better/not hopeless position to get in the later game but still Mordor wouldn’t need to camp around in the base and do nothing on the map as in 4.5.2.

What do you think?
 
Greetings,
Smeargollum

[Seleukos I.]

Hi
I certainly agree that Mordor is somewhat strong atm. I also agree that resetting the troll change would be a good option. Trolls were really good in 4.4.1 and, as Gollum said, them not being used in 4.5.2 isn't wasn't because trolls were bad, but rather because Mordor couldn't get any mapcontral/discount.
So I really like the idea of nerfing their damage (and maybe buff their armor vs pikes again, to make it easier to use them off-host). Lowering their damage would mean you could counter trolls not only with pikes+archers but also with cav (at least as Long as it's only one troll), which would be especially relevant for Isengard's eg, but also other faction.

Concerning overseers: I'm not sure if they are really op without the super strong trolls.
If anything I'd maybe nerf the damage buff of the active ability for swords.

Best regardes,
Seleukos

[Elendils Cousin 3. Grades]

Trolls have not only been buffed since 4.5. Their damage against buildings was reduced by 25%, they take ~25% more damage from pikes and they can no longer reach level two to unlock their heal through the Influence of Sauron. The buff to their damage was mostly directed at their interaction with cavalry, which is already pretty much always fantastic against Mordor and used to be able to hunt down trolls as well. Considering trolls are more expensive and slower than riders and are supposed to be a least a soft counter to cav, this change was necessary.

I agree that trolls are now incredibly powerful in the very early game, their life gets a lot harder once both pikes and archers are out. That being said, it's certainly possible they are too good for their cost and cp in those fights. From my personal experience, I've been able to deal with trolls as the game went on, but this may very well be dependant on the matchup.

Weaken the buff of the overseers (not too much but just a little bit so that you can’t form an early battering ram off orcs with some trolls and crush certain factions).

Which factions do you have in mind here?

[Smeargollum]

Which factions do you have in mind here?

Lorien for example would need bears to counter orcs but they get hardcountered by trolls and the normal Lorien warriors have no change against overseer orcs so they have some troubles there.
Angmar has in my opinion also quite a hard time against overseers in combination with trolls since wolves are not really worth it against free units and we all know that thralls are a bit random (sometimes the thrall/ -> the entire batt, just dies immediately). And it is very hard to counter trolls early on because you have only weak pikes and no archers.
....some people (not me) might even say that disgusting factions like Ered Luin have a hard time against them because their guardians are not so great at fighting.
I also think that Isen has a really hard time against trolls because they can't get pikes at all and counters like Sharku that worked in 4.4.1 don't work anylonger because trolls are just to strong for him. And so trolls can deal huge amounts of damage against Isengard... and then most of the time Lurtz and Ugluk strike back 

I also always liked the mechanic that you could engage a singele trolls with cav and chase him down but as soon as there are two it becomes extremely cost inefficent. That is not possible as before from my experience ... also the random fear effect is not good in my opinon.

Furtheron you are right that you can counter trolls quite well once you got out pikes and archers but I personally think that they are too good in the early game while they are really not good in the mid game (which makes many players delete the troll cage so that we seldom see battle trolls ^^).

So all together I feel like trolls are not in a perfect spot at the moment:
They are op/very very strong in the early game and force the opponent to make a pike-archer clump (until he has enough to splitt pikes and archers). And as soon as the counter is on the field you can basically not use them a lot anymore and you only a-move orcs across the map.

That are my feelings about some problems of Mordor. What do you think about it?

[JoJo(TheRealOne)]

Hello my fellow Edainers

Time to talk about Mordor again. I have been playing 1v1 more regularly again lately and together with other good and active players I came to the conclusion that Mordor is still too strong.

My understanding of Mordor as a faction is, that they are weak in the early game and grow stronger in the mid and late game. In my opinion this concept doesn't really work currently since Mordor's early game is pretty decent if not very strong. My suggestion is too slightly nerf the early game of Mordor in the following ways:

The overseer spell only summons one overseer. The cooldown of the spell get's reduced by about a third and you only need 5 overseers for a Sauron level instead 10.
The idea behind is, that Mordor doesn't get to start off with two overseers and can't secure the map so easily.
Aditionally, the overseer doesn't provide any armor buffs to archers anymore. The damage buff of 50% is already very powerful, they should at least be conterable with good micro/focusfire plays.

My other concern is Shagrat. 30% more armor and passiv aoe damage is a bit too strong for a scout hero.
My idea is to connect the aoe to an active ability, preferably the "greed". This way Shagrat can keep his unique aspect but isn't so oppressive anymore, especially in the eg.

I hope I could provide some useful ideas.