Thursday, August 30, 2007

A Quick Footmen Frenzy Creep Guide

Creeps are a very important part of Footmen frenzy, particularly in the first few minutes. Often your usage of creeps will determine whether you level or not. Hence learning to choose and use them effectively is a great help in learning to play frenzy, on several different levels.
This effect upon leveling is amplified by good teamwork, since each player can only buy 3 creeps. Picking which ones to get in what situation is an important skill for teams hoping to enter and do well in the weekly tournaments. You should plan your strategy around what creeps each person is going to use and choose these based on what heroes and techs they are getting - thus you have clearly defined what each person is doing and you can ensure you don't fall behind because you're missing something.
You should try to keep your creeps within the range of the fountain of mana since the extra regeneration amplifies their abilities a lot. Creeps without mana can be killed to make way for new ones if you're out of food.

A list of each creep and their suggested usage follows. These are intended as guidelines in using each creep and give situations when they are good - putting them together with your own techs and hero combos is up to you.

Sorceress:



Cost:200g
Spells: Slow, Invisibility, Polymorph

The Sorceress is an excellent mid game creep. The main usage for her is invisibility - using this spell it is possible to sneak up on armies and heroes and get into position without being detected. Invisibility is usually used as a surprise - it's high mana cost prevents it from being spammed early game without a couple of sorceresses. However, remember good players will use dust spam and witch doctor wards to nullify your advantage. Invisibility also allows you to dodge projectiles such as bolt, coil, and shadow strike - this is most effective if you have very little lag or if you just need to prevent a hero from killing you until your allies can drive it away.

Slow is semi-useful against high tier non ranged armies, however since you can only have 3 creeps it is difficult to get the mana to cast it enough to make a difference. You should always turn off autocast when you get sorceress until you want to use slow. Using it to slow heroes can help you to finish them off, but counters like speed scrolls and teleport scrolls usually prevent this, and it can be hard to know when to cast.

Polymorph is good for shutting down other creeps if you can get in close, but it is not generally used.

Priest:



Cost:200g
Spells: Heal, Dispel Magic, Inner Fire

The Priest is a specialty spellcaster who mostly exists to counter other creeps and summon heroes. He is good as a specific counter against heroes such as Beastmaster, Firelord, and Dark Ranger. I would recommend getting one fast at the start if you don't have the ability to focus wards much since they all die in 1 dispel. Whenever you see summons, even late game, get priests to dispel them and make heaps of gold. This is especially good against Scroll of Necromancy and Animate Dead. You can also counter spells like silence and drunken haze.

Heal is useful if manually cast (turn off autocast - it's a waste of mana) on a weak hero, as it allows you to sit around in the field while being healed and doesn't force you to back away from the action to get or use salves. Inner Fire is a mediocre companion to this which raises your armour and gives just a little extra survivability to your hero. Unfortunately you need to cast it often as it has a low duration.

Witch Doctor:



Cost:200g
Spells: Sentry Ward, Stasis Ward, Healing Ward

The Witch doctor is a very powerful frenzy creep as his main abilities are AOE instead of single target. He only has the mana for one Heal Ward at the start, which you should use judiciously. Stasis Ward is possibly more useful in footmen battles, as when well placed it allows you plenty of free hits and a chance to cast channeling AOE. Witch Doctor is pretty much essential at the start; ideally get your allies to pool you so you can get one right away. Keep 2-3 around for the first part of the game and keep him near the mana fountain to make sure you can cast as much healing and stun as possible. His wards should be placed behind your lines (slightly in the case of stasis, as far as possible while affecting footmen in the case of heal) to prevent the enemy from killing them before they have an effect.
Make sure before you cast that you're in a location where you'll be fighting for a while.
Sentry ward is an underused but useful counter to invisibility and wind walk.

Shaman:



Cost:300g
Spells: Purge, Lightning Shield, Bloodlust

The Shaman is a footmen battle specialist since he has the only damaging AOE amongst creeps. This is balanced out by his relatively high cost. Use lightning shield to gain extra XP and gold at the start, although you will not get your investment back fast but rather need to rely on slightly faster leveling.

Against good players who micro out the shielded unit this combines well with stasis wards. Target a footman with high health so that your spell lasts the full duration.

Purge is a good companion spell that can be used to slow enemy heroes or to save your own heroes from single target dispelables such as entangling roots. It costs a lot of mana however and the range is not great. It can also dispel summons in a pinch, although priest's dispel is far superior.

Bloodlust is a specialty spell which helps heroes which rely on attack (Assassin, Priestess, Blade,
Pitlord) to do more damage. You have to keep casting it though as the duration is low. Combine this with Unholy Frenzy to get the equivalent effect to ~4000 gold worth of items. It can also be used on demolisher, to speed up slow heroes like Dreadlord and Panda, and to bloodlust Tauren for extra pulverize.

Don't leave it on autocast.

Druid of the Claw:



Cost:200g
Spells: Roar, Rejuvenation

This creep is useful throughout the game if you can keep it alive. It is melee so it doesn't tend to work well in a control group with other creeps. Roar is marginally useful for footmen, use it at the start if you have the micro to keep the druid hold positioned near the fountain. Rejuvenation is less useful in frenzy because heroes quickly get far more than 400 hp, however it can be used to save heroes and creeps from small amounts of damage if necessary.

Banshee:





Cost:200g
Spells: Curse, Anti Magic Shell

Banshee is a rarely used creep which is a specific counter to hero killers, both physical and magical.

Anti Magic Shell protects you from a certain amount of magic damage; note that it does not prevent side effects like stun and slow. This is great mid game, especially against the Death Knight who cannot target the banshee instead. Curse weakens physical hero killers like Blade/Jaood/Avalanche so that they hit you less often and you have more chance to escape. In this case it's a good idea to use it in combination with invisibility and possibly slow since it only causes the hero to miss 33% of the time unlike the old pocky's 66%. Always turn off autocast.

Troll Priest:



Cost:250g
Spells: Sleep, Heal

An underused but powerful custom creep (the only one left ), the Troll Priest is great for preventing powerful heroes from bothering you and for getting cheap surrounds with melee. Sleep costs quite a bit of mana, but it is still spammable and allows you something like the old creeps where you can put a lone hero out of action for a while. It also allows a team without disable to cancel channeling spells like Blizzard and Death and Decay. Heal is the same as priest's, and has the same usefulness, however as before remember to turn of autocast so you have mana for the more important sleep.

Necromancer:



Cost:200g
Spells: Raise Dead, Unholy Frenzy, Cripple

Necromancer is a combination creep best used with heroes which can shut down the inevitable dispel counter. His main spell as normally used, Raise Dead, produces heavily armoured but low hp skeletons which give you quite a bit of extra bulk and DPS on the battlefield. If used in conjunction with a hero like DR or DK that can shut down opponent's creeps, or used in a situation where this isn't a problem (eg a rush), raise dead can be very effective - but it's free gold if your opponent can get a priest out and begin dispelling.

Unholy frenzy is much like bloodlust and is best used in conjunction with it. The small damage taken by the target is fairly irrelevant in frenzy.

Cripple is much like slow with a high mana cost and can be used on heroes if needed. I rarely find a use for it since Necromancers mostly need all their mana for Raise Dead.

Demolisher:



Cost:400g
Spells: None

The demolisher is a legacy creep - once overpowered and essential it is now hardly ever used as it does a fraction of the damage and also takes up valuable food. You can try using it with unholy frenzy and bloodlust to boost it's effectiveness, but be aware that it is vulnerable to enemy spells as it doesn't have the mechanical classification in frenzy. Perhaps with the cooldown decrease and hp increase we will see more of it in the future.

Peasant:



Cost:300g
Spells: Repair, Blink

Essential if your base is damaged or being attacked, fairly useless if not. Does not take up food, so you can safely mass a couple if you're afraid your base is going to die. When under attack, walk the peasant into blink range of your building and then blink to a free space so that you get there as fast as possible.

Zeppelin:



Cost:450g
Spells: Load/Unload

The zeppelin is a semi-useful utility creep. Often used to protect and speed up sheep on a battlefield, the zeppelin can protect your weak units and heroes while allowing you to use them when it's safe or just to gain experience. Be aware that it is very obvious when a zeppelin is in use and that counters such as ranged units, orbs, and phoenix can quickly bring it down and leave anything inside paralyzed. You can also use it with mass teleport to transport allied heroes and units.

Creep Related things:

Superlanboy's Staff of Sanctuary:

Cost:200g

Rarely used, this item allows you to instantly save creeps (and other units) from being killed. One good use is to charm an enemy creep and instantly staff it to prevent it from being killed by your enemy before it can escape. Try it out when you have low lag and are facing creep killers such as DK and Alchemist whose missiles can be prevented by its use.


Special thanks to nipp0523 and goron- who helped me with screenshots; images by bark so if they dont make sense dont blame tek -bark

Text copyright Nohunters.com. Permission is granted to reproduce this article so long as the authorship and copyright notice are preserved.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

The first official FOOTMEN FRENZY 6.1 TOURNAMENT

This week's (and hopefully subsequent weeks) tourney is going to by hosted by keldyn and roaaaarrrr at 5PM Bnet time, Saturday September 1st.

If you don't know your time in reference with Bnet, log in and type /time. It will give you your time and Bnet time.

Now I know everyone's been waiting a long time for tournaments to start up again. so this time around we're gonna keep it real simple and not overcomplicate things with a ridiculous amount of rules so hopefully everyone will enjoy themselves.

Your rules!

1) No base suiciding. Period.
2) No leaving the game if your or an ally's base is under attack.
3) Gamehosts will be determined by ping, or selected by the tournament organizers. This may mean trying until everyone can agree on a host. However if a tournament organizer selects the game host, that will be the game host regardless.
4) If you have a concern or need to report a rule infraction, message keldyn or roaaaarrrr at any time. This means actual infractions, not complaints about imbalance.
5) Failure to comply with the suiciding or leaving rule will result in a ban from the following weeks tournament.

The winning team of each game needs to save the replay and send it to nhtourney@gmail.com


If you are unable to get a spot in one of the brackets sign up your team as alternates and show up at tourney time. There's usually at least one or two teams that can't make it and need replacements. This goes for people without teams as well!

And one last time, the tourney will be on Saturday, September 1st, 5PM Bnet time.

Good luck everyone!!

Footmen Frenzy Download (v 6.1)

Footmenfrenzy 6.1 has been released.
You can download it here.

Here are the changes:

- Attack/Life Upgrades now located on racial circle instead of main building.

- Racial upgrades now available at tier 1

- Ethereal bug fixed

- Animate Dead bug fixed

- Tank Token damage type fixed

- Penguins damage type fixed

- Statue autocast trigger area will be looked at/fixed

- TheBigGame Stampede now has a casting animation

- Falcon Rain of Fire now has a casting animation

- Acid Bomb armor reduction reduced to 3/4/5/5/5/5 (previously 3/6/9/12/18/25)

- Secret hero abilities fixed

- Bill item loss not fixed (no idea what causes it)

- Warden Shadowmeld hotkey fixed

- Flying Meatwagons now have 25 mana (previously 0)

- Faerie Fire hero duration reduced to 20 seconds (previously 60)

- Demon Hunter Metamorphosis level 3 cooldown/duration reduced to 45/45 (previously 75/75)

- Rejuvenation can no longer heal flying units

- Blank base damage reduced to 25 (previously 45)

- Demolisher now unit lvl 5 (previously 2); base damaged lowered to 50 (previously 81)

- Obsidian Statue Healing Touch range increased to 200, mana cost increased to 10 (previously 2)

- Obsidian Statue Spirit Touch mana cost increased to 10 (previously 2); no longer affects self

- Human War Training damage reduction improved to 3/7/12/16/22 (previously 3/4/6/8/10)

- Tooltip errors fixed on Gamera turtles, Falcon Hex

- Shops spaced apart more

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Download Footmen Frenzy 6.0

Footmen Frenzy 6.0 was released !!

Download Footmen Frenzy 6.0

Here are the changes:

General
New game modes added (selected via menu)
- Normal
- Random Heroes (Each player starts with a random hero)
- Random Draft (Basically removes random heroes from the taverns, leaving a pool of 11 heroes remaining)

New alliance mode added (selected via menu after game mode)
- NONE (3v3v3v3 like usual)
- Top vs Bottom (Team 1 and 2 vs. Team 3 and 4)

New terrain added
New loading screen (to be changed in next patch)
Invisible units now give off Auras
Heroes now start with 0 mana, and resurrect with 0 mana
Map file size is a lot bigger

Tech/Tiers
Tier buildings have different models
Tier 1 is now free and automatic; there is no timer for Tier 2+
Beacons have been added to allow selection of your tier 1 race, and to switch races
Race switching cost reduced for all tiers
Beacons autocast Healing Scroll (can be interrupted) cooldown 10secs
Racial abilities have been reworked
Tech units have 25% more HP
Armor upgrades replaced with life upgrades
Weapon and Life upgrade costs increase with each level, and give more returns
Tier 5 cost reduced to 30000
Undead Skeletons have been reworked (no unholy frenzy, bigger size, slower spawn time, more hp/damage, and more bounty)
Undead Abominations no longer have Disease Cloud
Night Elf tech has Shadowmeld instead of Phase Shift
Orc tech at tier 3+ has Ensnare

Attack and Armor types have been revamped
- Human < src="http://nohunters.com/e107_images/emoticons/smile.png" alt="" style="border: 0pt none ; vertical-align: middle;">

Heroes
New proper names for most heroes
3 All-new heroes

Human
Mass Teleport casting time increased to 20/15/10 seconds; Invisible units targeted by Mass TP are no longer revealed.
Avatar - Yields extra bounty of killed (like meta); lower duration and lower cooldown
Storm Bolt - Lower stun duration at higher levels
Phoenix no longer affected by healing spells
Devotion Aura weakened at all levels

Night Elf
Metamorphosis - Cooldown time on meta gets lower as level is higher
Fan of Knives - damage increased by 10 at all levels
Trueshot Aura - weakened to 10/20/30/40/50/65 % bonus dmg
Starfall - cooldown decreased (now 150 sec at all levels)

Orc
Serpent Ward - duration increased at all levels, mana cost increased by 15 at all levels
Earthquake - cooldown decreased by 20 seconds at all levels

Undead
Unholy Aura movement speed bonus decreased at all levels; Area now 900 at all levels
Infernal reworked (shorter duration, higher base dmg, larger stun aoe)

Neutral
Stampede - Cooldown no longer decreases at lvl 2 and 3 (now 180 sec at all levels)
Alchemist - Increase duration of acid bomb by 5 sec at all levels
Fire Spawns - Level 5 range increased by 100, lvl 6 range increased by 150
Charm - Has a small AOE effect. Cooldown 45/20/5 sec

Custom
Dino Din - Ultimate model changed
Avalanche - Critical Strike replaced with Omnismack
Random_digit - Taunt now compels attacks. No longer heals the hero.
Levia - Base movement speed increased
Sea Elemental - Mana cost decreased
Great Fishing Harvest - Cooldown decreased
Ravage - Entangle now has AOE effect
Assassin - Has a new skillset (Frost Bolt, Mirror Image, Searing Arrow, Animate Dead)
Cattlebruiser - Now has Windwalk instead of Dark Pact
Turtles - Now have autocast devour
Falcon - Hex now the same as SHs
Falcon - Now has Rain of Fire instead of Bears
Bill K has higher base intelligence
Stampede - Cooldown no longer decreases at lvl 2 and 3 (now 180 sec at all levels)
Unholy Aura movement speed bonus decreased at all levels; Area now 900 at all levels
Charm - Has a small AOE effect. Cooldown 45/20/5 sec
Tichmeh Armorz - Has been weakened at all levels

Creeps
No more food limit
Brand new creeps
Increased Healing Ward mana cost by 50

Items
Removed Scroll of Beatings, Necromancer's Bidding, Healing Ward of the Gods, Giant Leg, Fast Wood, Flask of Soda, Cheese, Talisman of Evasion, Soldier's Mask, Sturdy War Axe, Warsong Battledrums, Healing Wards, Firehand Gauntlets, Scroll of Protection. Look for new items in the next patch.

Mana potion/Mana stone at middle has a 5 minute cooldown before being available
Dust of Appearance = 1 charge instead of 3, lower range
Speed scroll cost increased to 100

Bark's store:
Bark's Store renamed to Wut're ya buyin'?
Fox Frenzy (3 charges) - Slams the ground, slowing nearby enemy movement and attack speed by 50% for 5 seconds (does not affect heroes), cooldown 15 seconds; mana cost 40; 150 gold
Eyebrows of Mashiba (2 charges) - Casts Cripple on target unit (hero duration = 7secs); mana cost 150. 200 gold
Bark's Clutch (2 charges) - Instantly kills a non-hero unit; cooldown 60 seconds; 400 gold
Jean's Rage (3 charges) - Throws a child at a target unit, dealing 200 damage; 400 gold (death coil range)
Wrath of TekPike (consumable, 1 charge) - Grants immolation (same dmg as infernal cloak) for 20 seconds. Undispellable. 300 gold
Barks Nikes cost decreased to 500

Weapon Shop
Berserker's Blade - 5% (or 10%?) Cleave; 200 gold
Berserker's Armor - Returns 10% of melee damage; 200 gold
Berserker's Helm - Reduces damage taken by 5; 200 gold

Armor Shop
Sobi Mask cost increased to 350 gold

Archvault
Dust of Appearance charges reduced to 1, duration reduced to 10 seconds, and area reduced to 500
Roaaaarrrr Scroll now located in Archvault
Scroll of Miyata - gives invisibility + speed (with roar scroll duration/aoe) 700 gold.. attacking breaks invis, dispellable
Scroll of Itagaki - grants 75% evasion (roar scroll duration/aoe) 800 gold; not dispellable
Scroll of Saeki - 1 charge of Mass Teleport 1000 gold
Scroll of Darkness - covers middle in fog of war for 60 seconds 300 gold

Altar of Legends
Scroll of Takamura - gives undispellable invulnerability (huge aoe.. like enough to cover all of middle) for 2 minutes 12000 gold; available same time as altar (at the same shop as altar)
Altar - cost 12000
Tier 4 - cost 30000
Claws of Devastation - cost 3500
Cursed Axe - cost 2000
Fixed name of the Granite Golem (it was still called wendigo in shop)


Some random notes about the new version..
- Life upgrades when fully upgraded give a 100% bonus to HP. This means that you are not going to get much life from upgrading it at the lower levels.. This is likely to be reworked in the next patch.

- Racial upgrades similarly are more effective at later tiers, and not so much early on; this is something that caused a big delay in 6.0 and we decided to keep it the way it is now to speed up the release.

- Depending on how serious the bugs we find are, we will likely release a new patch in 1-2 months, which will probably include items to fill out the shops.

- This change list itself may be incomplete; our original change list got deleted when the forum was pruned, so yeah It should list most things though.

Download Footmen Frenzy 6.0