The Official Night Elf Strategy Guide

The 'Official' Night Elf 'Strategy' Guide

In the not-so distant past, I unveiled a strategy guide to an unsuspecting public. This virtual parchment, with black backdrop and the modern phonetic alphabet employed in white, explained how a general controls the forces of the Undead Scourge. Kin, kindred, and kings all declared that this in-depth masterpiece was the greatest literary composition since Shakespeare's Macbeth . It is time to expand the concepts addressed in the previous issue and level the very fabric of this web site. I release to you, the The Official Night Elf Strategy Guide .

Getting to Know Your Night Elf Heroes

Demon Hunter
A blind melee hero who tanks surprisingly well, deals solid damage, meshes well with whatever Night Elf unit you employ to mass production, and possesses a disturbingly powerful ultimate transformation spell in addition to its bread-and-butter mana-damaging regular ability. Most Night Elf players will explain to you that my comments are based on biased perspective and that, by comparison, the ‘Blood Mage is capable of destroying civilizations at level three and the Tauren Chieftain used Warstomp to cause the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.' I obviously made up that quote, but if the average Night Elf player didn't have down syndrome, I'm sure it would go something like that.

Keeper of the Grove
A four-legged intelligence hero that possesses the Entangling Roots ability. I can't give you an in-depth analysis on the other skills because:
Force of Nature - The one time I used this spell it summoned two pieces of shit.
Thorns Aura - Why did they make his other ability a special aura graphic? If it doesn't do anything, why even make it a skill?
Tranquility – I'd rather have level four Entangling Roots.
If you accidentally pick the Keeper of the Grove, entangle sheep until you've collected enough wool to negotiate peace with your enemy. You have no fucking chance outside of that.

Warden
Sometimes affectionately called Ninja Gayden (due to the well-hidden pun contained within the nickname that she's a lesbian), the Warden is the pinnacle of retarded hero design. She becomes unkillable when she attains a third level Blink ability and she also fails to appease horny nerds by revealing absolutely no skin. Come on, Blizzard, the Night Elves were designed around their curves. If you're fourteen years old and experiencing new hormones, don't ever place the lesbian gladiator in your starting lineup.

Priestess of the Huntskrieg
One Priestess and thirty Huntresses. This is what Night Elf strategy is all about, folks!

Note: If you take the Scout ability, your teammates and close relatives will probably laugh at you. Scouting is not a permissible strategy in Warcraft III and veterans of the Random Team gametype will let you know it if you attempt to do so with any unit. I once had a player tell me that scouting was worthless. So remember kids: knowing what faction your enemy is and what they plan to do is worthless in a genre designed around counterattacks and tactical supremacy.

Pandaren Brewmaster
An April Fools joke gone awry, the Pandaren Brewmaster has only but one weakness: the necessity to click two buttons in order to maximize the effectiveness of his area of effect spell, which gives all but the greatest professional Night Elf players difficulty. I pulled it off once and an in-game trigger automatically gave me the victory. Kind of ironic a Panda Bear would be the most powerful Night Elf hero. Bear in mind I am foreshadowing some un bear able shit.

Naga Sea Witch
This hero is the reason why backstabbing will never be made illegal. By simply using it, you're causing a severe detriment to your chances of winning. It's not a good thing when players can agree that every hero spell in the game has some functional application with the exception of Mana Shield. This spell is so bad that it makes the ‘Fire' spell from Final Fantasy whatever look like ‘Firagabagathundaku'.

Beastmaster
It's ironic that the Beastmaster has the body of Jose Canseco, considering how much better he is at defense than the steroid abuser. In one era of professional Warcraft III play so long ago, this hero unit was so powerful that the rules of the game had to be changed in order to allow other people to compete with it. A 'patch', they called it. Didn't do much, so if you're looking to bundle up wins and place the link to your account stats on your work resumé, go for it.

Firelord
According to my experiences playing Final Fantasy (and I apologize for two references to a dying franchise in the same article), the Lich, Archmage, and Orc Water Bucket Launcher all own this hero with undeniable force. The rationale for this explanation is that Fire is typically countered by Ice and Water spells in most role-playing games. And don't even think about trying to use your Moon Wells.

Basic Tactics

Determining where your local Tavern is.
This Night Elf building is unusual in that:
• It is placed at predetermined locations (often far away from your base) and you cannot build your own.
• It is accessible by opponents! A gameplay bug, I would assume.
• Some maps do not even use the Tavern, creating an artificial disadvantage that only allows you to use four of the eight Night Elf heroes.
If you are fortunate enough to have one located on the map, make sure that you optimize its use. Your most powerful heroes are trained here with no waiting time.

Using the ‘Attack-Move' Command
When you are controlling units capable of destroying the enemy (no bad Archimonde-Wisp jokes, please), you need to let your hearty, morale-laden troops know where to attack, correct? By pressing the “Attack” hotkey and clicking on the terrain in front of them, your Night Elf Sentinels will honor your duty and slaughter any hostile presence along the way if their enemy does not consent to undesired sexual acts upon them. A well-known professional tactic involves repeating the attack-move command ten to fifteen times in succession. According to urban legend, it multiplies the damage output of the Night Elves to make them unstoppable!

Intermediate Tactics

Expanding Every Spot on the Map
In order to compensate for a skill set including drunken reflexes and adolescent decision making, it is necessary to control every gold-bearing resource on the entire playing field. This allows you to produce a new army of Huntresses in forty seconds, and works as a great placeholder to know that you have not won the game until you have not began sucking precious metal from the remnants of your opponent's charred city.

Presenting Yourself as an Asshole to Opposing Forces
Stereotypes are fun to use in comical matters, and those amongst you who are smart enough to come off as a complete retard can exploit this. Whilst the other three factions are generally disrespected, none can boil human fluids quite like an ‘arrogant, middle school-educated Night Elf player.'

Advanced Tactics

Micromanagement
Practiced by few Night Elf players due to a startling learning curve and overwhelming difficulty of use, micromanagement relies on basic commands such as “Move” and “Attack” to produce results that can maximize unit potential. Results stemming from the clever use of these tools include the ability to retreat hurt units and preventing the death of your heroes. You may see that players controlling other factions may be more common to try this tactic, but asinine comments such as “yeah that micro did so much 2 save ur army. OANED BITHC” are not only necessary, but integral to showing those idiots the light.

Unit Balance
On rare (and special) occasions, skilled Night Elf players will attempt to combine his faction of breasted women with several other unit classes. This logic is based on a theory that most good strategy games employ a system where each trainable unit will cover another's weaknesses. While this claim, like Communism, is highly unsubstantiated, creative and skilled players will occasionally attempt this and lose. If you're looking to win games with the Night Elves, try what I've written on this page outside of the paragraph.

Getting to Know Your Night Elf Strategies

The Huntskrieg
Classlessly named after Hitler's unstoppable method of (known to uber-dorks by the term) “OMGWTFTANK RUSH!1”. The Huntskrieg is a giant blob of Huntresses that can destroy anything outside of air units, which they are evenly matched against.

Requirements: An extra expansion, Hunter's Hall, four to six Ancients of War.
Level of Micro Required: Micro!?
Popularized By: Cecil of Clan GGL, who produces awesome shoutcasts at http://www.wcreplays.com .
Highest Recorded Actions Per Minute Using This Strategy: 29
What to Watch Out For: Every mother and their pimply-faced sibling is going to call you a newbie for using this strategy. Don't run to the bed crying, unless you're going to drop your tears in the dozen Moon Wells you've built for the recovery phase. If you are so terrible that this strategy actually fails, replenish the health of your army and go back at it with the eight new Huntresses you've trained and finish the job.

OMGWTF MASS DRYADS
A fast unit that slows enemy units with its attack. Do I even need to explain why this is too powerful?

Requirements: Ancients of Lore, Tree of Ages, and a couple of expansions don't hurt, either.
Level of Micro Required: Using the Move command to run from siege weapons.
Popularized By: The early patches in Reign of Chaos.
Highest Recorded Actions Per Minute Using This Strategy: 57
What to Watch Out For: If you chose a Demon Hunter to lead your army, advancing to the second tier should not pose a problem. What will pose a problem is anything that launches a missile or a boulder. For every thirty damage you can poke into a Mortar Team, it can bombard back with five times the force. Counter this by expanding the map, claiming that your thirty Dryads defeated four Mortar Teams because siege weapons suck versus an unarmored unit, and making derogatory comments about their sick and dying cat.

OMGWTF BEARS AND DRYADS
Imagine the 800-pound Grizzly sleeping under your porch can now regenerate the shotgun wounds you put into it on the fly and has a blind man with two bat'leths (the proper Trekkie name for his twin blades, I have researched) is telling you not to fuck with it. I'd be scared, too.

Requirements: Tree of Eternity, Ancients of Lore, a couple of expansions.
Level of Micro Required: Let them eat cake and ice cream!
Popularized By: Trick question. No one who plays Warcraft III is popular.
Highest Recorded Actions Per Minute Using This Strategy: 80
What to Watch Out For: Occasionally, some shmuck will actually attempt to fight you. Question his sexuality and then proceed to ‘rape' him with your army. If this man complains on his local gaming forum that you exploited an abusive strategy, make a new account for the sole purpose of verbally berating him until he places a restraining order on you. “You're not allowed to surf any web pages on a server within a hundred feet of the server he's surfing,” they will say.

Chippo
It's not quite a potato chip, it's not quite a hippo, but man, is it fucking lame.

Requirements: Tree of Eternity, Ancient of Wind, a number of Chimaera Roosts equal to your Actions Per Minute ( four to eight ).
Level of Micro Required: Just kidding.
Popularized By: Battalions of children who are induced into orgasm by the sight of a powerful heavy air unit.
Highest Recorded Actions Per Minute Using This Strategy: Nine and a half.
What to Watch Out For: Most of the worthless trash that uses this strategy is so stupid that they actually believe Chippo (the Chimaera and Hippogryph) is a single unit. This won't stop them from attack-moving into your army, gaping a hole the size of your brother's teeth into your ground-based army, declaring themselves better than you, and then dodging a one versus one request. While this strategy is flawless when executed properly, most Night Elf players forget that Chimaeras cannot attack air units. Use this to your advantage by claiming the new patch gave Chimaeras their air-to-air attack back (they had it in the beta stages) and decimate every living piece of flying flesh your opponent owns.

Conclusion

Now that you've finished reading this Night Elf strategy guide (or scrolled to the bottom, whichever came first), you have achieved all of the computer gaming knowledge that you'll need to beat up the jocks and impress the chicks. “Wow, you're so good at this game, let's fuck!” they will say. And just like that, you'll be fucking the women by night, the newbies by day, all the way into May.

As long as I'm rhyming, let me end with one! To the tune of Take me Out to the Ballgame, hit it!

Let's, go mass us the Hunts-krieg
Mass, four Ancients of War
Buy me some expos and Cracker Jack,
I don't know when to move plus attack
So let's root, root, root in the gold mines
If we don't win it's a shame
For it's one, two, three food for Hunts
In that ladddd-errrr gameeee

Well, that was mildly amusing.