The true value of upgrades in WC3 

Me listening to lectures: i sleep Me listening to RTS expert man: hmm yes tell me more

The true value of the upgrades is the units we make along the way!

I love the upgrades because the icons are so pretty. :o

I love how the intro to this video is basically "You guys don't want to hear about this, and you don't really need to hear about this, but I'm going to talk about it anyway because this is my channel and I get to talk about whatever I want."

Value of upgrades in RTS games - make the game fun. Upgrades are my favourite part of any RTS game and I think modern rts games need to focus on them more than they currently are

Man, this channel quickly became my favorite. I really really really enjoyed the "New game studios are making RTS for casuals" video. It gave me so much food for thought and I really wanted to comment and expand on it, I just haven't had the time to flesh out my position. Your content is truly a gift, Grubby. Have you ever considered designing your own game?

This is awesome. These Talks have been fantastic for me as a newer player, especially this one. A lot of people talk about builds, heros and units, but it can be pretty hard to find info and pointers on upgrades at least as a returning wc3 player and noob. I hope at some point we also get a Creep routing video and a Mercenary/Goblin Laboratory video for the same reason.

Upgrades tier list next? And summonable units and buildings tier lists after?

"I like games with a bit of luck, so that you can learn how to master chaos of the universe itself in a microcosmos of challenging game envoirment. I think it's fun, bad luck, good luck - I'll take all of it" Grubby 2024 well said

Today I learned from Grubby that Upkeep causes you to sell items for less money that's crazy This is a good video and a good thought exercise Mastering the game would be a futile endeavor if you had very good pinpoint skill for moving units and generally playing the game, but didn't maximize your resources and your opponent did

I love these nerdish in-depth analysis videos

To simplify the one die roll vs multiple dice roll: one die roll is uniform (each outcome has the same chance). Multiple dice rolled (and added together) turns the outcome into a bell curve where the middle values are more likely to occur than either ends (high or low).

Grubby bringing RTS discussion and making it more popular... This is truly amazing.

Hey guys, grubby of the law here...

Damn I’ve been subbed to Grubby for a decade and don’t realise there was this gem of a channel GrubbyTalks. This is where the real gold is. Thankyou sir!

Yes Grubby teach me more about the intricacies of a game I haven't played in a decade.

Stochastic in this context means that the value is random, but we have pretty good idea on how probable are the outcomes. A die roll is a very good example of that. You can't predict the roll, but you can pretty confidently build expectations over a number of rolls.

Man, did this dude explain everything while live??? Mad respect! I struggle to make such content while RECORDING and that gives you infinite tries!

So nice to look up your channel and found a new video just uploaded!

the ancient of war last hitting the creep at 42:30 ish is sending me. amazing editing, love the visual aid, but i was staring at it the whole time and just going 'no, no the exp, you can't'!

Two things: 1. If we consider items to be upgrades (it makes sense), then consumables should rather be considered... units. Healing potion gives you temporary advantage in a fight, like new grunt, but it's amulet of vitality that gives you permanent bonus, like an upgrade. 2. Creeping in mobas is a zero sum game actually - neutral creeps don't respawn fast enough to always fulfil strategic needs of both teams at the same time (if there are creeps available on the other side of the map, but the enemy just killed the ones near the objective that is important at the time... they get what they want and you need to choose what you prefer to sacrifice)

Loved the section on attack upgrades: convey the idea and consequences is more important than being mathematically concise. How often you see this information formulated mathematical terse and consise and than you need some time to figure out what it means numerically and even more time to understand what it means for your gameplay. Good job!

9:28 Destroyer can’t go back into a statue while a bear can transform back into a druid…

It's been a long time since I played this (back when Boots of Speed stacked and sentry wards could block the space they are on leading to some fun shenanigans) These videos are leading me back into it

Ultravision actually works on all night elves regardless of gender, great upgrade

I wish build and research times were visible in the tooltips. :o Maybe in a mod... maybe by me, if possible... once I've space for WC3. lol

I think with the defense upgrades one kills creeps faster because their units die to creeps slower thus managing to produce more damage before they die, lol Thanks for the video, Grubby. I really enjoy the way you analyze and explain the mechanics in a nicely digested way, covering all the nuances needed slow enough

5:25 OMG, literally TODAY I had a discussion on reddit about the new respec feature of No Rest for the Wicked, where I stated that the respec should be expensive in order to retain the feel of commitment and meaning of actually have stats and stats requirement. I know it's a coincidence but it seems oddly correlated ahahah

That is a crazy deep dive on upgrades! For me, 1/1 looks nearly always worth it as it is cheap, quick, and the most effective, even available at tier 1. 2/1 and 2/2 are much larger investments, and 3/3 is more of a luxury. Interestingly, armor upgrades could be used as a crutch for poor micro, as youll have more time to save any given unit.

Thank you grubby. But you forgot one thing(due to your clear focus on hyper competitive gaming): emotional resonance. While this might not be as visible in an RTS, it is oh so visible in an RPG. What do I mean by emotional resonance. To show you what I mean, let me first delineate between an emotionally flat and dynamic upgrade. Flat: +5% hp ; sure, makes you win, but you can't really feel that 98% of time Dynamic: New Ability ; might not even advance your plan, but you WANT that upgrade This is something RPGs, MMOs especially, battled with for a long time. Boring upgrades. Something to consider.

Tl;dr: opportunity cost is fundamental in designing a good rts game. Love these videos, Grubby. It would be great if you could talk about the way pro players decide why and when they try to master a game and enter its scene(expectations, options, money, mechanics, skill expression/ceiling, randomness, etc.). For example, in the dawn of war video you mentioned that there was a wc3 pro player that came from that game(mainly because there were no tournaments). This means that wc3 had some things that dawn of war didn't have that killed its pro scene. I think this would be a good topic because the lack of a pro scene is one of the reasons a game can fail and you have ample experience in the reasoning behind picking or not a game to become pro in.

Ive watched Grubby for decades and im loving these talking topic videos. I also haven't played wc3 in at least 10-15 years

Stochastic and deterministic, haha the same as in radiation damge irl for x-ray exposure :D

the math talking about the percentage of bonus for each upgrade is a bit off, but it doesn`t remove from the conclusion

NEED MOAR GRUBBY TALKS! LOVE THESE ❤

Love these discussions and analysis more than actually playing the game 😂

Interesting. I did not know about the hidden base damage, but it makes sense from an implementation point of view. Basically Level 0 being the unupgraded upgrade

Good upgrades add a diversity of effect when it comes to a player's playstyle, such as upgrading your town hall to a keep early on to get more advanced units at mid game, or upgrading your base through expansions to amass an army enough to overwhelm your opponent. It's not only by increment of numbers, it's also about changing the tides of battle through access of more powerful strategies.

Interested people are interesting people. I've yet to discover anyone else that keeps me awake late into the night talking about the extreme details of a game I haven't played in over a decade

Keep them tier lists coming please!

Great video Grub. Point is made very well in the video: in Warcraft 3 due to the heroes, just a single 12% stat boost, isn't really that impactful. If somebody would really like to dig deeper into 'upgrade based RTS', should try the custom game mode Marine Arena in Starcraft 2. In that custom game, you really feel the value - or disappointing value - of every unit upgrade. And the upgrades make or break your game completely.

Certainly made me more conscious about upgrading in any RTS. Gets way weirder where gold is just one of like 8 different totally different resources you have. Say, your units cost gold, but upgrades cost tech pool, but reinforcing costs more gold than building a unit, so you get upgrades to save gold, but not too early, because that costs more. In total war multiplayer you have only a rank-up, which doesn't cost much, but increases all stats, but still costs you the 1-time gold investment at the start of the game. In CoH there's individual squad/vehicle upgrades AND global upgdrades. I don't even remember how stuff worked in Homeworld 1/2 at all, that had some really hidden stats and modifiers.

Some random things I still ponder about after watching all of G's recent talk-time videos: ● Unarmored units still receive bonus 'armor' upgrades, despite not wearing any, so they're basically bulking despite taking probably the most punishment from all available attacks. > The only difference between 'light armor' (most flying units) and 'unarmored' (most casters, Huntresses, Dryads, Gargoyles), is that the former takes (way) more bonus damage from Piercing and a bit more from Magic attacks, and the latter takes moderately more from Piercing and Siege attacks equally. > While this was all made for balance purposes, the nomenclature is really confusing and dare I say, counter-intuitive to a degree. Especially for newer players. ● It took 15 years for Cannon Towers to benefit from Fragmentation Shards, but despite using a powder-based weaponry, they don't benefit from the gunpowder upgrades. > CTs are already unique among all other HU towers due to having a Fortified armor type, however you do have to pay quite a lot to enjoy their resiliency. > I feel like if a HU already decides to invest into Masonry, Workshop, Frag Shards, *and* makes a CT anywhere, they probably deserve that little extra damage given how costly it is to unlock all of that infrastructure and most likely soft-lock themselves into a certain tech path, i.e. Gyros, Tanks and Mortars, most likely. ● On NE's T2, you unlock 'Improved Bows' which increases Archers range by 200, making them transition better into the later stages of the game, but the T3 upgrade, ' Marksmanship' only gives you a flat +4 bonus damage. > That 'exclusive 4th attack upgrade', while obviously powerful and welcomed, feels pretty basic and the improved range also does only exactly what the description entails. > I'm wondering how cool would it be from an expression of skill perspective, if 'Marksmanship' increased the Archer's projectile speed while decreasing their overall attack period, thus ever so slightly benefiting lower-skill players with a passive bonus (i.e. they now deal damage faster), while also opening more micro-based options for higher-skill players, who would now enjoy best of both words, by dealing damage faster and being able to reposition their Archers quicker thanks to the shorter overall attack duration. > For Hippogryph Riders, I feel like nothing should change and the benefit should remain as it originally was (+4 dmg), basically rolled into that unit for 'free', via the 'Hippogryph Taming' upgrade. ● Tier-3 units have been a hot topic for a while now, and I'm still baffled by how despite all the changes in the past couple of years, weak units remain weak, and moderately good units remain as they were. > Bears are in a good place, imho, and Taurens have been discussed by pros and various WC3-bachelor-degree people already so I won't delve on them either. > Abominations have a cleaver and deserve an upgrade that would grant them a passive 'Cleave'. > It's a great tool for a frontline tank who's auto-attacks are deplorable anyway, so combined with Disease Cloud + ability to spread a percentage of whatever mediocre auto-attack damage they deal to begin with, seem like a fair reward if you manage to connect with a couple of workers before enemy responds, you die, etc. > Knights' main issue is that within the very narrow niche they are moderately effective at, i.e. timing attacks vs UD, they are countered hard by Banshee Possession, more than anything else really. > While HU's only responses I could think of are Staff of Sanctuary, or focus-firing/nuking the Banshee, it'd be amazing if the old WC2 'Paladin' upgrade would make a comeback, but instead of granting Knights ability to heal (which is already covered by Priests), combine Sundering Blades and Resistant Skin in it, i.e. immunity to Devour, Possession and reduction of certain spell effects. ● Orbs are a super-fun tool and there are two 'neutral', i.e. no faction-specific, that are practically unheard of in 1v1 games, due to item drop table level preferences of modern mapmakers and players. > The Orb of Frost is obviously borderline broke, but if its special effect wasn't a 100% accurate and instead procked like the Orb of Lightning (30%), and maybe a +5 bonus instead of a +6, it would be better balanced against the Orb of Darkness, perhaps even fall into the same item level, thus we'd occasionally see it on Twisted Meadows. > Faction shop Orbs are pretty unbalanced relative to each other and seeing how some effects are so much better than others that they only proc some of the time or stack, perhaps unifying that percentage-based standard into all effects by slightly tweaking their stats would be a better way of balancing than pricing them differently from one race to another as they are now? (who reads this anyway..)

15:51 I love all your stories bro!!! Excellent video!

Grubby, please don't ever stop making videos like these!

A big appeal of Terran in Sc2 for me is the upgrades + transformation aspect of units that meant I had "flexibility" which I like.

Grubby, u r such a sunny guy. Pleasure to watch you!

I honestly think that the more upgrades, the better. +1:+1 upgrades represent the quality of your army's equipment, some upgrades represent new tactics or spells. I honestly wouldn't mind 4th or even 5th level of Blacksmith (and its equivalents) upgrades which may require sacrificing a high level artifacts to represent that now you have more valuable materials for your armor and weapons.

Upgrades are a great part of RTS. Choosing them makes your army stronger for the rest of the game at the cost of making it more difficult to switch techs. This is the exact kind of balance that makes RTS decision-making fun. I like the Starcraft style of point damage reduction rather than percentage damage reduction. This means that armor upgrades are more useful against marines than they are tanks, and that plays into the different strategies around timings which adds a ton of strategic depth.

i love the part about grubby himself having no clue when the Liquipedia goes in dept about how dmg gets calculated haha

If we're talking about units, then my favorite is Batrider when it suicides using concoction

What's the idea behind the ai rushing lv 3 damage upgrades on orcs? Is there a reason to rush it before other upgrades or is it just the computer doing computer things?

The difference between sc2 and wc3 upgrades is so huge. Like in wc3 warcraft upgrade gets you usually about below 10% ehp/edmg. While in sc2 its often ~20+% dmg and depending on enemy 5-30% ehp while having a lot more units in sc2 than in wc3

Hey Grubby Love the vids! :) Could you make a video on the best low upkeep unit army for every race in your opinion? Cheers!

Honest to god I was half expecting this to be a tier list of each individual upgrade. "Level 1 weapon upgrades is cheap, effective, but not always worth it, tier B. Level 3 weapon upgrade however is extremely expensive and still only provides a moderate DPS improvement, despite how long it takes to acquire it and the cost. Tier D."

loved it! Don't upgrades generally cost more lumber than gold? compared to units (% of the total cost in lumber is higher). I think that is very important when dealing with wc3 economy as gold has a limit on how much you can gain per minute, although lumber is more abundant. Deciding between upgrades and units here (or even teching) is an important part in the game economy that could have been mentioned (other than the high upkeed effect)

I would always upgrade ranged weapons to tier 2 before getting to low upkeep. I remember I used to hate the upkeep system with a passion but when I realized it's the perfect time to hall tech, attack, buy hero items, tower up, build production buildings,expand and upgrade right before supply crosses threshold, you can gain a huge gold advantage just because your opponent rushes his army size and doesn't understand economic efficiency.

Do units that transform into entirely new units give more xp? As in, do Berserkers give more xp than Headhunters? And what about Hippogryph Riders vs the sum of Hippogryphs and Archers?

I always do full upgrades and I even feel guilty if I release units into battle without upgrades. This is a strict and simple way to increase the power of the army. I'm a noob and I play with noobs. None of the noobs know how to effectively use active abilities, tactics, or implement all these tricks and shenanigans like pros can. But I understand this and concentrate on strategic components: unit-anti-unit mechanics, comprehensive and passive reinforcement of the army, auras and other simple mathematical superiority. And in this way I received pretty good results. By the way, there is a special pleasure in this: watching how your enemy dances and jumps around you, trying to repeat the movements of pro players, all this jerky "microcontrol", but you simply crush him with a stronger army.

Hey Grubby, cool video. It would be interesting to hear how armor points combined with armor types also. For example piercing attack and magical attack vs heavy armor. Can we say that in some case armor upgrades are more useful?

Armor upgrades to not effect spells, but does that include physical spells, like the Warden's?

One advantage for armor upgrades that you did not mentioned is healing efficiency (that you talk about in other videos).

i love grubby videos

Grubby would you ever consider doing a video on user or community suggestions for the game? I'd love to hear your thoughts on exclusive upgrades for lower tier units Such as giving siege tanks a choice between Barrage, and Gnomish Gatling Gun, one or the other, the latter allowing siege tanks to target ground with a flying machine style attack Huntress could receive an option between the current glaive bounce upgrade, and one that removes the bounce but increases damage/range

Watching all the grubby WC3 videos so I can play again and struggle against Medium Bots

I loved in BftME when you upgrade your army and everyone has shiny armor and weapons :D but apart from sheer stats increase I think upgrades make the game more interesting, both casually and competetively, you get more variety or more different strategies and skill expression

Your comments on re-spec got me thinking. Some sort of content or tier list on tome of retraining in wc3 could be cool

You've been watching even more Spirit of the Law, huh? He really does have such good editing and sound production choices.

damage upgrades is linear, there is no need to calculate them from previous upgrade as most of mechanics in wc3 are linear. Also, not all dice roll 12% of basic damage, some units get more (ghouls benefit ~15% damage for example). Also upgrading already armored units less benefitial than units with low/no armor.

I recommend spirit of the law to maybe be an inspiration

This is outstanding! +intelligence

Forget about Khadgars Bong of brilliance Grubby, Dovahkief Dragonbong is S-tier!

not knowing kept me awake, all those years..

This is good content idea!

Yo Grubby. I would love to see you try Battle Realms. Their upgrades are very different in Warcraft. Instead of damage/armor upgrades or maybe some additional skill, the upgrades are more like boosting one aspect of their kit(less mana for every heal, less damage taken from certain attack types, you get the point)That was my second favorite game in my childhood and I haven't seen someone playing that in more than a decade now. Hope you'll see my comment and try that amazing game.

I have not played WC3 in 15 years at least. Yet, here I am.

There's another element missing from this video. I'm HU with a fast expo playing mk + gryphons. I'm teching to t2 (or even t3). I can upgrade my gryphons before I even produce them, so in a way I'm kind of producing extra gryphons by getting upgrades, i.e. making 8 gryphons + getting an attack upgrade is like making 9 gryphons, so the blacksmith produced a gryphon.

random question grubby: would Thorns Aura (and Spiked Carapace?) be good if they also affected ranged units while in melee range?

Something I just thought about as I started watching this: While I previously called Red Alert 3 "C&C cosplaying as a Blizzard RTS" if you compare it to C&C3 the latter is actually the one featuring many - often quite impactful - upgrades. While in most cases it is "just" *hit harder* and in far fewer cases *live longer* there are also some utility upgrades akin to Ensnare. I still do think RA3 is "C&C cosplaying as a Blizzard RTS", but at least in terms of upgrades it is actually pretty far removed from it.

I have a question: do you prepare this? Like its part of your job and there is some slot in ur weekly shedule where you sit down and maybe read about it again to make shure its that way or think of the best sequence for the presentation?

My micro is so poor that I almost always research armor and take alot of healing. But what is the general rule of thumb? Do you fill up your supplies first before researching upgrades (that are not essential to a strategy)? Do armor upgrades even do much for units with low hp ?

Upgrade tierlist!

9:00, i read in wiki nature blessing also increase NE building stats? And does ultravision only give extra vision for heroes or for all NE units?

How would you feel about if upgrades only had half the effect on units currently built, but full effect on units of that type not yet built? That would incentivise going for upgrades before doing a tech switch, would that make RTS games more interesting?

What are those 6 ways ? :D 1. Goldmine, 2. Creeps, 3. Selling item 4.transmute ulti, 5. Undead unsummon what are other ways ? Or some campaign gold rewards /quests

waiting for the day rts games become famous again and grubby becomes the most watched ww3 player

Isn't burrow not also a hero upgrade since some patches ago (for CL Beetles?) And Defense for footies a defensive upgrade/speed negative upgrade?

What are the more than 6 gold income, I only got 7 Mine, Selling, creeps, unsummoning, pillage, transmute, send to ally

Gonna guess. Low tier: bombs for gyros, Top tier: pilliage, flak cannons, druid of the claw master training, dispel, destroyer,

Just started the video, but on the topic of "numerical upgrades are boring" - well, yes, but actually not really? I mean, fundamentally, numerical upgrades could sound boring (they aren't as flashy as "give/change unit ability" ones) but sometimes they change the whole unit just as well as the other ones. I want to elaborate. So, picture this - we have a basic roster of units: heavy infantry, archers, light infantry/skirmishers, heavy cavalry and light cavalry. So, let's say, HA and spearmen have 1.25 movespeed, archers and skirmishers have 1.75, HC has 2 and LC has 2.5. If we add just simple numerical upgrade to archers' ms, like, 20% increase, suddenly it can outrun heavy cavalry which means that from being countered by them (since they take less damage from arrows or overall bulky enough to soak a bunch of shots and make contact relatively healthy) they become soft-counter instead (while doing less damage overall, with proper micro, 5% difference in movement speed makes them able to outrun the HC and soften them up before a contact with proper infantry). This is a simple numerical change which drastically changes gameplay and tactic. You can't just steamroll archers with heavy cavalry but they can't really fight back without being quite micro-intensive. Yes, I know, archers outrunning cavalry sounds busted on paper but I thought about it for literal two minutes, so surely gamedevs could figure out balancing measure. What I want to say is that just a stat change can have a huge impact on a unit. Imagine "+1 attack range" for spearmen, which allows them to have a first hit against infantry and therefore making them a great mopping-up tool. Or "+7 line of sight" for light cavalry making them useful even when after "harassing enemy economy" stage of the game. Those are, in fact, "numerical upgrades" but they really have an impact. On the other topic - are "+1 attack range"-type upgrades even should be considered "numerical"? I mean, yeah, they simply change the stats of the unit, but for melee I would argue it is as impactful as the whole new ability

This channel is bad for my health One of my favorite things to do when I watch grubby on twitch or more like my favorite parts of his streams is when he starts talking about things and explaining things because I love the deep conversation and now he has a channel dedicated directly to that how am I supposed to watch him on twitch if he keeps releasing all these videos

What about orbs?

I'm still trying to work out the 6 sources of gold income he mentioned... -Mining - killing creeps - selling items - Alchemist ult - orc pillalge - undead building unsummon Is that right? all of them are affected by upkeep?

this is something i wanted to ask for a longer time. I've always wondered watching your game play why mill/blacksmith/etc upgrades don't seem to be used that much. when i was playing 3v3 4v4 and the likes i would always get all the upgrades for my units. granted I'm a noob basically i had an intuition that it might not be worth it. but I'm just surprised that this is how it is

No upgrade teirlist?

this is the video I waited for. OMG. In every RTS but especially WC3 I was and still are obsessed with getting upgrades fast. And then ending up with too few units, and lose the game.

Hi Grubbs! This needs to be a college course.

Please discuss at some point how Upkeep affects strategy in WC3. I understand the mechanics, but not how it actually affects the game, or best way to plan around it.

i think this video is 1. 2. and 3. reason why u making videos, we need this, we want this and we like to hear u talk about it

I think the hardest thing is to be able to convey these sometimes complex topics as easily as you can with Grubby. I wonder as if you chose your life as a streamer, since for me you were the world's best player in Warcraft 3, I sometimes wonder how such an extraordinary personality and intelligence like you would have developed in another professional area. With the potential to be the best in the world at something, you should actually become a multimillionaire in almost any profession. Maybe if you had become a physicist we would already have a uniformly functioning overall theory of our world view, but screw it, you're much more entertaining as a player.