Hello everyone!
I think it is time to talk once more about Mordor and it’s problems from a balance point of view. Probably most people agree that Mordor is too strong at the moment and some factions have an extremely hard time against it. The issue however is, that it is not overpowered against every faction, the way Isengard is, but there are some factions, that have a decent or even good chance fighting against Mordor while others look rather hopeless.
So, let’s take a look at some matchups as an example to try to understand how Mordor could get nerfed or rather changed.
Mordor vs GondorIn this matchup and most other matchups the Mordor player usually goes for early trolls which are a great tool at harassing farms and with that getting map control, killing harassing sword units of the enemy and they can even fight against some swords and pikes as long as they are supported by orcs. The counter to trolls are - next to pikes, which prevent them from killing everything immediately - rangers, as they can actually kill the trolls. However, the trolls are always supported by a huge number of orcs that can be spammed for no money and and when combined with overseers, they are extremely strong and can destroy pikes or even Gondor swords. In order to efficiently counter the orcs, the Gondor player has to go for cavalry, which cost a lot of money in the first place and can get smashed by the trolls once it is on the field of battel. So, you basically have to for rangers to counter the trolls and you have to go for cavalry to counter the orc spam but for Gondor both of these tech units are extremely expensive while the Mordor player only needs to invest money into trolls and CP upgrades as the orcs don’t cost money.
When the Gondor player is going for rangers first the Mordor player can easily scout that and react to that by going for either more orcs and less trolls or for something like Cirith Ungol or a Nazgul battalion and when the Gondor player is going for cavalry first the Mordor player can just spam trolls and destroy Gondor.
Mordor can switch between the tech like trolls, Cirith Ungol, Nazgul battalion, etc. way easier than Gondor, that needs to spend much more money on its units, and with that make that matchup almost impossible for Gondor.
Additional note: Going for Denethor spam doesn’t really work either, as far as I am aware, as Mordor can just build more cost-efficient units and overtime defeat that kind of strategy. The Nazgul battalion or well microed trolls work really good against this.
Mordor vs RohanMordor does most of the time the same thing that it does against Gondor and that is spamming orcs and going for early trolls and then following it up with whatever it wants to. Now the difference however is that a lot of the units Rohan can get are cheaper than the equivalents Gondor has. It can get cavalry for 400 instead of 800, normal swords for early harassment for 150 instead of 200 and the only unit that they can’t get cheaper are the spear throwers as they can’t get discounted but therefor they are also a way better counter to trolls than rangers of Gondor.
Because of that Rohan can go for cavalry first to keep the orc count rather low and gain spell points and then tech into spear throwers to hard counter trolls and with that you can have a good midgame against Mordor and then for the later game Rohan can get captains, horse archers, lots of heroes or whatever they like.
So summarized Rohan can afford the counters to the different units Mordor has way better because they are cheaper or more effective and with such an efficient set of units it is possible to fight against Mordor. Another benefit from cheap early cavalry is that you force the Mordor player to spend money on pikes which he could otherwise spend on economy or more trolls.
Mordor vs LorienIn this matchup Lorien has a hard stand against Mordor as well, I feel like, despite having the possibility of cheap “cavalry” by the beornings in the early game and archers to counter the trolls. The reason for that is that on the one hand beornings get countered even harder by trolls than “normal” cavalry from other faction gets and on the other hand that the standard units of Lorien trade really bad against orcs, especially when they got overseers.
Mordor vs DwarvesIn compression to Lorien dwarves have really strong infantry that can easily fight against a lot of orcs and as dwarves have rather cheap cavalry with the battlewagons as well, they actually have a decent chance in defeating Mordor despite the lack of quality archers but therefor with very good pikes … I know it sounds crazy that dwarves are not so bad
So, when we now take a look at the strength and weaknesses of Mordor in these four matchups that I choose as examples we can see, that first of all the factions with good cost-efficient units that can counter orcs, trolls, Cirith Ungol, Nazgul battalions, etc. have a better chance at winning and then that those factions that get their units that counters orcs, which is cavalry, cheaper have an even better chance.
And when I ask myself the question what
the one thing, that makes Mordor op, is, I would probably answer that it’s the “free” orcs, that don’t cost any money but just CP and recruitment time.
However, I am not saying that orcs should cost money as them costing no money is one of the central ideas and most iconic concepts for Mordor. Furthermore, I don’t think that the “free” orcs are too strong by themselves but they just make everything else too strong and that’s why I think the right way to approach Mordor’s balance problems is to nerf certain “tech units” that are supported by the orcs or buff the orcs less instead of nerfing the standard orcs that come out of the barracks.
I got some ideas on how that could be done:
First of all, overseers are too good and should be nerfed. So, I would suggest to nerf their general stats buff they give the unit passively after being combined with the overseer (that could also be adjusted depending on whether it’s a sword, pike or archer unit). And I would also like to see a change to the active ability the units get, when they are combined with the overseer, so that it gives instead of the really strong stats buff only a smaller one but in addition to that a speed buff to the unit, in order to give Mordor a chance to get quicker to a farm that gets harassed for example. It would also be possible to have the speed buff as passive effect and the stats buff as active one.
Another thing that seems really powerful are the reinforcements of Harad, especially when they have upgrades, as they can destroy huge amounts of units especially in a scrapy and chaotic game. When the Mordor player keeps harassing the entire game with groups of orcs and trolls that leads often times to situations in which both players don’t have a lot of money and in these situations an upgraded Mumakil and upgraded cavalry that stay permanently on the battlefield win the game easily for the Mordor player. Obviously it is a spell for seven spell points and that is supposed to be powerful but I think especially with the upgrades it is too good.
There would be two ways to nerf this, I think.
One would be to make the upgrades harder accessible for example by needing two influences of Sauron or some other mechanic. If I recall correctly there was a topic that suggested some system for that, in which the Mordor player would need to use several influences to get all the upgrades.
The other one would be to give the Mordor player other real options to use the influence on so that he actually has to make a decision on which building he wants to use it on and when he chooses the wrong on it can bite him in the butt later on. I know that this is easier said than done but I think it would be nice to buff armoured battel trolls a little bit so that they are an option to go for or another option would be to make the influence on the Cirith Ungol barracks more needed, for example by locking the archers behind it as well… that would be rather radical though and I am not even sure if I would like that. And of course, making the economy upgrades more important would be good as well, as right now Mordor can play with either very late economy upgrades or none at all. For that stuff in the later game, like units on the outpost, certain heroes, etc, would need to be more expensive.
But I don’t know if that would really fulfil the purpose of nerfing the Harad reinforcements with upgrades or just make other stuff, like armoured troll, better.
Then there are, in my opinion, a lot of other things that just add up to making Mordor way stronger but aren’t really a big problem by themselves.
Let’s start with… why is the witchking way quicker than normal infantry so that he can chase armies and heroes?
Why are castellans dealing aoe damage and with that have a lot more destructive potential than any other heroic sword units?
I also think that Nazgul cancelling all leaderships instead of just debuffing is way too good as that is way stronger than any leadership other factions have… just compare it to the leadership of king Aragorn
The level 10 ability of the Mouth of Sauron was nerfed by moving it to level 10 but that still means it is broken once you get your heroes to that level.
Shagrat dealing passively massive aoe damage is extremely strong in the early game and that makes it even harder to fight against Mordor orcs in the early game. That could for example be changed to either an active ability (the one that he get’s on level two) or he could just deal less damage so that other scout heroes can take him out.
That are all the ideas on how to nerf Mordor that I have at the moment. Do you agree with me, do you think that I am completely wrong and that Mordor is way too weak or do you have additional ideas on how to nerf them?
Best regards,
Smeargollum
PS. Buff Mollok, pls pls pls
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