Strategier

Orc

Dual Hero Assault Guide

1.03 - May be valid in higher versions

     Usually, people find it hard to level two heroes and use them effectively. This is due to the reason that if two heroes are leveled together, they will split the experiences gathered from creeps / enemy units. This usually causes your heroes to die relatively fast to large number of ranged / siege units when engaging in a battle. The orcs, however, have heroes that can bypass this more efficiently than other races. These two heroes are Farseer and Tauren Chieftian. Farseer and Chieftian each have skills that deal direct damage to groups of units fast and hard. Farseer has Chain Lightning in his arsenal and Chieftian has shockwave. This guide will concentrate on how to take advantage of those two skills most effectively in order kill off your opponent’s units quick and easily. 



     There isn’t really a set amount of build order for this strategy. However, you have to remind yourself that upgrades to the stronghold should come relatively fast since the heroes want to be ready for the early battles. The basic build order for people who are new to this concept is like the following :



1) Queue 2 peons before putting your existing peons to mine gold. 

2) Send two of the existing peons to make farm / barracks at the same time. The other two peons should start working on mining job immediately.

3) Peons that were queued previously should be put into mining job. As soon as the pig farm is finished, have the peon which constructed the pig farm harvest lumber. Lumber mill is not required yet.

4) Queue one more peon and then Farseer - The reason that we want the Farseer first is because his main spell, chain lightning, increases in the number of targets it can hit at once and should be maxed as soon as possible – opposed to Chieftian’s shockwave, which has set amount of area that it can inflict damage upon.

5) When the barracks is completed, queue one grunt then upgrade your town hall to the Stronghold as soon as possible. Queue second grunt after

6) As soon as the second grunt is made, start building a lumber mill – this is needed for training Troll Headhunters, which will make up major portion of your army. Start levelling up your hero

7) When the Stronghold is completed, start producing Tauren Chieftian. Start producing Headhunters.

8) When the Chieftian is completed, your Farseer should be level 3 or so. Level your Chieftian once or twice, then rush to the enemies’ base with everything you have. 



     If you meet up with your opponents’ army rushing to your base, don’t panic. In fact, you should be happy that you ran across them. Because this build is built specifically for killing units hard and fast. When you engage, make sure to put your Chieftian / Grunts ahead of Head Hunters and Farseer. By doing this, you’re allowing your more durable units to create a wall for other units to deal damage from the distance. Your next move should be targeting your opponent’s hero with chain lightning. Make sure that your opponent’s units are not far apart. Although chain lightning has impressive range, it won’t cover the whole screen. After the chain lightning, bombard your opponent again with shockwave. Make sure that the shockwave covers most of the area that your opponent’s units are standing on. Shockwave travels in straight line with width of two and half grunts. After the initial spell bombardment, pull your melee units back – not completely, just a little so your ranged units are still dealing damage. By doing so, your opponent will be forced to do two things. Either retreat to his base or try to kill your head hunters. Either way, your opponent’s at disadvantage because all his units probably have sustained heavy damage that it’s easy enough for head hunters to finish them off in two to three shots at most. If your opponent retreats back to his base, however, check to see if you have enough units to destroy his structures quickly enough. (usually, about 12+ units are considered good enough for destroying a base with some units in it) Make sure that your heroes stay alive at all times. You’ll need both of them to deal heavy damage to units and you definitely need your Chieftian to deal damage to the buildings fast enough (since Head Hunters get damage penalty against the buildings) 



     The unit production / teching should be going on at the same time as your assault. This is achieved by hotkeying your group of units and some of the key structures back at home. Quickly phase through the battle scene and your base if you have some time to consider your next move. Usually, after this type of hard rush, you can use the extra time to level your heroes so they can use their ultimate spells, then expand quick while building multiple barracks / beastiary in order to pump constant supply of units. Watch out for your opponent’s workers sneaking out of his base. If you get carried away with the frontal assault and be careless about unit production / scouting, your opponent can easily build an expansion and start rebuilding. Another reminder is that if possible, try to stock up on supplies such as scroll of healing and scroll of protection before you enter the battle. Using them effectively at the right time will give you significant amount of advantage. 



     Sometimes, you’ll find yourself in a position that you couldn’t destroy his base, but inflicted heavy damage on his finance. Don’t try to rush in and blow your units away. Just tech up to beastiary and get kodo beasts / wolf rider for additional punch. If you find your opponent getting lots of units even after the sustained assaults, get Spirit Lodge and Shamans for bloodlust. I prefer to bloodlust only the Headhunters rather than melee units for two reasons : First, Melee units are supposed to be meatshields, not main damage dealers with this strategy. Secondly, when a unit’s bloodlusted, it increases in size – thus choking up the area. Therefore, with melee units, you will attack fewer amounts of units than when they were normal size. (Imagine a situation where 2 grunts would attack 1 huntress. When the grunt is lusted, its size will be roughly a little larger than the huntress – if there are only 1 huntress and 2 grunts, this would be fine. Now, if there are 4 huntresses and 8 grunts in a tightly packed area, do you see all grunts getting their share of space for attacking?) In late game, make sure to get Taurens and warstomp for heavy assaults and quickly destroying your opponent’s expansion. Also, when your opponent has cash to mass ranged / siege units, you will need extra tanking ability of the taurens which surpass the grunts’ easily.



Additional Tips for micromanagement :



1) I’ve already stressed this, but make sure to start chain lightning on your opponent’s heroes. This is for two reasons : First, you don’t want your heroes / units endangered by the opposing hero. Second, most people will surround their heroes either with melee units or hard tanking units that deal damage. Since you don’t want your ranged attackers facing melee units, you have to make sure those units are destroyed first – sometimes killing the hero’s support is better than killing the hero.



2) Do not waste your ranged units. Micromanage them. When one of them is being selectively targeted, make sure to pull him out of range and attack from the other side. Same thing applies for your heroes. If your Chieftain or Farseer is being selectively targeted, either pull them out to safe range for another round of Chain Lighting / Shockwave or heal them.



3) Do not waste your time positioning your shockwave / chain lightning. They are usually fool proof spells. You want to destroy your opponent’s unit as soon as possible, not conserve your heroes’ mana



4) Shockwave is currently bugged and does double damage against units in movement – thanks for the forum goers and other beta testers for this information

Tilbage