you mean you're new? if so you're already a better gamer than 99.99% of gamers considering RTS games are more complicated and hard to learn than every other type of game
It's especially interesting and noteworthy to affect the meta in the world of online build orders. You'd think someone would have tried everything, at some point.
Zacard's DND strategy is actually coined as "the Fabian strategy". This strategy derives its name from Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, Roman Republic dictator given the task of defeating the great Carthaginian general Hannibal in southern Italy during the Second Punic War (218-201 BC).The Fabian is a military strategy still used today where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection.
bro, editor, you should put the link to this channel in your description and link it to the main channel, I had no idea this even existed and I've been subscribed to Grubby for years
@@NaldaxTV oh yeah its in the middle, I donno why I always looked past that for some reason, maybe ADHD, my bad, and for whatever reason it was never in the Related Videos for me either, not your fault, cheers
I love how grubby starts the video by saying, for the builds we may not mention the person who thought up the build, but certainly the one that made it popular and took it to high level gameplay. Then when he gets to the mass headhunters (a build he undoubtedly popularised), he fully credits SaveOrcas headhunter strat. What a freaking heart of gold.
Bober’s TC/grunt/zeppelin rush with moonwell harass probably my favorite meta changing moment with Turbo’s pit lord/backpack/skeleton armor upgrade rush at close second
they gotta make professional Esport players pause the game and start talking shit every 5 minutes, it would immediately double the viewer numbers for Esports
My claim to fame was back in 2013 heart of the swarm, in CSL, when I cheesed out some low level pro in TvP with 2-2 2base all in pulling the boys, two weeks before MVP did it in GSL. To this day I still call it the jombozeus build. 0% chance MVP didn’t copy me!!
Bober was the main innovator of Warcraft, let's be real. The psychological effect of attacking the full wall-off to lul his opponent into a false sense of security, then a strike from the sky, with a zeppelin drop, taking out both the tree and every wisp in the base. A legend
In my humble opinion, there is a player named Melon that comes with the craziest ideas and strategies to redefine a new meta. His earth-shattering ideas often makes no sense but, over the course of a game, get shaped into a fine refined jewel that leaves his opponents in shock. If Melon had better English, I'm sure he would be better known in the Western world but, alas, he's struggling with even basic syntax. Surprised he didn't make your top 5!!!
I love Grubby’s insistence on reminding everyone that a viewer of his is responsible for the headhunter discovery every time he brings it up, so wholesome
Cool story about the mass Talon strat and all, but maybe you should have taken a minute to tell those of us who live under a rock how it works and what made it so scary? xD
One of the scary things about mass talons was the single target powerful crowd control that cyclone provided, being able to spam that on a Blademaster severely reduced the orc armies' dps, cyclone could be dispelled, but it was not cost efficient to use Spirit Walker disenchant, since there were lots of talons and only a few Spirit Walkers. Shamans were not popular in the orc meta at this time as their 2018 buffs had not been made yet. Also orcs made a point of stacking dps items on Bladmaster during this time, which meant crowd control was even more cost effective vs. Blademaster. The Slow spell and Frost Armour were other ways of lowering blade dps, so they were popular vs. orc, too.
Most of Orc's damage comes from Blademaster damage. Mass talons pretty much remove Blademaster from the fight, to the point where people would use invul pots just so Blade could stay on the ground for 7 seconds and hit. Orc had 3 grunts from early game, with Heavy armor. Magic damage, which Talons have, does double damage to units with heavy armor, so grunts would melt. Talons are vulnerable to AOE damage, hence why everyone went TC shockwave into it. DH mana burn on TC though is really strong in preventing shockwave, especially since TC is strength hero with very little mana and mana regen and Orc is the worst race at gaining back mana. With talons, both players did very little damage and fights were very extended. This meant that Orb of Venom did a LOT of damage inside late game fights. Night Elf, when massing talons, already wants summons to pressure Spirit Walker mana. They can get Beastmaster second with a very fast tech and have a very strong spike with Quilbeasts and DH. Burrows have heavy armor, therefore get one shotted by Talons and Fortified Defenses was tier 3 upgrade (now it's tier 2). Most high level creeps in melee maps have heavy armor (most creeps really tbh), so talons kill them very quickly. The main saving grace for Orc imo, is that Walkers have AOE dispell AND resistant skin, else they would also get cycloned and it would be even harder to deal with.
Best strat realization I had was watching a buddy way back in 2007ish. He rushed the enemy base with firelord, fast shadow and nothing else as an Orc and I was left gobsmacked. I never really gave any thought to summons until then, but that moment made me realize that what I saw as trash was actually pretty damn strong. Helped me beat the campaign on hard mode! HAHA
Great video! Sweet memories from my childhood. I was buying one magazine about computer games. And as an addition I was getting a CD with content, including cybersport matches. It was my best part: all of these games of pros, like Grubby, TH000, Sky… Thank you! Never thought I will be watching your videos like 15 years later ❤
Please give us the 6 hours version of you explaining innovative strats back then and today! And what I also would enjoy watching: You commenting great games of the past of the big names (incl. urself). Where you point out great plays that we casual players would't even be able to acknowledge ;) Oh and some more DC explanatory content pls ;)
Fastest way to get to a creative level is to follow preestablished routines by people in the same field. in RTS=Follow build orders till you integrate the cadence of income to production to action to focus to an automatic state at which point distribution of focus becomes much easier. When you get to that point you are much more cognizant of the impact of any deviation from the ideal and a lot of the creativity comes from circumventing or supplanting the negatives that come from stepping outside of an established order. You'll be able to step into an analytical mindframe so much faster if you just follow what other people do because when you are starting out there is an overstimulation from all the aspects of the game. Your focus will flit to and fro from creeping, to scouting, to producing and it feels like if you blink you'll have a four figure bank. That hyper fixation makes it hard to breathe and zoom out to see the game from a different perspective. And that's the perspective that generally fosters the most free flowing sort of mind state. Edit: this was intended as a reply to dude who was starting out
Awesome video ! Thank you ! :))) Once again a big thank you Grubby for sharing your passion, I remember the first matches where your name appeared on the replay sites, where I read rumors about you that justified your precocity by the fact that you were a young pianist! lol To come back to your video, as a fan of warcraft and starcraft since the beginning, I followed hundreds (thousands?) of matches live or in replay! It's my football ;) In my old memories of the beginning of warcraft III, what had amazed me in the evolutions of the meta of this nascent game, was the aggressive use by the NE of their building in the enemy bases and in their creeping. It seems so natural and obvious today! But at the time it was worthy of a cheese and even posed a balancing problem, so much the spam of war tree in the enemy base was problematic! More recently what I particularly enjoyed was Happy's use of the Creep Lord (following his buffs) in his matches against the HU. Who doesn't enjoy watching a Happy vs fortitude arm wrestling match? :) Long live WC III!
In 2010 i started watching Grubby vs Moon matches to learn and adapt new strats to my NE and Orc . Seeing the mass DoT was a trip down memory lane! I got in the top 100s in solo and duo (US East). Thank you for your teachings Master Grubby 🙏🏻.
That intro about creativity reminded me about the Bronze League game where all of our minds were blown by the calculated math to make a tavern hero opener work in undead. As a scrub, I couldn't tell if my "innovative build order" is any good, but it amazes me that there's potential in something so unlike the RTS elements of WC3 and instead goes all in on the RPG aspect of rushing a tavern hero. There's surely got to be other tavern hero openers like that which can be discovered in both UD and other races.
It was the time when we and my best friend had the only way to follow you Grubs - watching your replays. I was a fan of MaDFroG and my visavi would follow 4 kings and Grubby. We were playing 1v1s dozens of time during each week,and it seemed like we were training and preparing for something big. Then one day, my friend showed me the power building human with fast altar/farm, then training free hero and then immidiately upgrading to keep, loosing economy to get the fastest 2nd hero from the tavern possible. It was very pivoting mindset so I've started to play this with summon heroes and as much mercenaries on the map as possible hired all the time. It was very different and awkward Warcraft for me,but I'm still thinking if pro level player would commit to it,it will be monstrosity that crushes. Thanks for bringing up those memories,man,good vid
Loved this talk man. I always especially loved this creative part of the meta perspective of an rts and wc3 in particular. Would love to see more vids in this direction ❤❤❤
I love that those games between Moon and Zackard are on RUclips, I remember that you mentioned it on stream so I watched them all (as well as you against Zackard) and that last game was definitely amazing as you said.
I still remember the first time I saw militia creeping and expansion on LT, circa 2003, when I started playing online and watching replays. I was in awe that you could do this and it works. It's still a cornerstone of HU early game today.
The only thing I'm familiar with is Bisu dubbed "the revolutionist" who was considered a fresh face in the BW scene back then, practically inventing the modern PvZ playbook, which used to be so bad with a wr of
Hey some of us consider him one! It’s an interesting one, I’m hoping one day there’ll be a big Netflix or something documentary on the history of pro BW, so many great stories yet to be told. I’d love to know the origin of the ‘Bisu build’ especially. It’s really only with pro houses of quality players, closed off that you see something emerge seemingly from nowhere and 3-0 sweep the player considered almost unbeatable in ZvP I have heard it said various parts of this strat were workshopped and experimented with, but it needed Bisu’s mechanics to pull it off. He may not have the greatest macro or micro of all time, I struggle to think of a better multitasker though, which fits this strat like a glove I’m not sure how true that is but I’d love to find out one day
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on these, it's hard to imagine the impact of different strategies for us casual players as mere audience. Sky is as close as we can get to a national hero in esports. Later players of LoL and DotA 2 might have more fans but he was like 80% of the reason video games was no longer seen as a self-destructive habit like gambling in China. Back then we talked more about how consistent and disciplined he was, not realizing coming up with an extremely effective strategy is just as amazing.
Frozen armor on fiends and heroes against blade master was used by Ted and won him the world championship, if I remember correctly. Prior to that frozen armor spell was totally underestimated and never used.
As someone who played in the 2003-2010 era but not much after that: I'm not 100% sure if he invented it but the American player ShrieK was the first human I saw do MASS towers (2004-05 or so?). Before him people would build a few towers and they could be taken down by destroyers or bears. He built.. TONS of towers and played a strong macro game, then followed it up with mass workshop which I hadn't seen from other players at that time. That turned into fairly meta human shortly after that. He wasn't a great micro player but had some really interesting macro ideas. Another one that comes to mind was the circlet buying and general item stacking approach on DH and BM. I think Shortround won WCG primarily based on that strat in a patch when circlet was very cheap at the shop.
It was anti-orc strat. Orcs got buff for Reinforced Defenses and available on t2. Shaman + HH combo was strong counter, shaman purge priority target. And finally Shadow carry. SH Serpent wards smack DOTs.
i always enjoyed watching Th000 play human. his bloodmage/mk/paladin combo looked nasty to play against (really nuked undead with banish,storm bolt,holy light) and had some other creative play with zeppelins and whatnot
My favorite innovation was Crowjam playing bloodmage first/second in many matchups from 2007-2013 and it taking over 10 years to catch on and become meta.
I distinctly remember a period of time in which Farseer was the meta for orc, and there was a guy by the name of CADX2Craft who always went Blademaster first and really showed the potential it had way before it was the meta.
Grubby once said on previous video that Asian player is more at perfecting control and microgame while Euro player are more creative with strategy. Well, 3 out of the 5 META DEFINING innovation are from Asian player! BTW I felt like Orc always has a disadvantage against NE with mass druid of the telon until they finally buffed the Serpent Ward of SH.
TeD. The single reason I started playing Undead. When I saw him playing against Fly in WCG I thought this race is so damn cool and underrated, I have to play it. The Ted fiend build was a revolution
Actually laughing out loud at saveorcas forcing his backseat gimmick build into the world scene and it works. One of the funniest things I've heard in gaming
I'm sure Moon played C&C Red Alert as well at one time. He was really nice on forums like either Xwis, Revora or it might have been Relicnews from what I remember of him This is going back many years, however. 2008-2015 at least. A strategy I messed around with in the past was Night Elf but Tinker, then get Faerie Fire and use Acid Bomb, the two stack and you can be hitting things for true damage from what I remember Just doesn't exactly go well into the Blood Elves that can debuff you with the acid debuff
A math professor passionate about a game he loves dearly, giving abstract ideas for pros to test while not playing themself is anime-level stuff. Gogo, SaveOrcas. Also a great map creator. I'd like some credits to be given to KiwiKaki as well. The Canadian player, though not completely driven by logic and experiment like SaveOrcas, had some unique HH builds, which worked for him and was pretty entertaining.
I think moon invented merc pulls (in order to hire mercs without actually creeping the camp) way back in the day.. i remember when they changed Terenas Stand because moon came up with the idea to pull creeps out to hire mercs right at the start of the game (back then TS mercs had ensnare) and it was unbeatable I think that it was also Moon that came up with kotg + mass fairies vs undead I think madfrog invented the mass garg style vs elf insomnia invented militia creeping ted changed UD in many ways too, his use of wyrms with frost armor for example, and he made frost armor popular vs orcs, before him nobody ever used that spell also solo pala fast expo vs UD by TH000
He did, he was doing it back in 2005-2006. The 2006 version of Terenas Stand had a Murloc Huntsman that can ensnare, hireable from second 0 into the game. Was so imba xD
getting tower rushed by takers Orc in the early years of WC3 on a tournament. I will never forget. Towers in the wood shooting my lumber peons. and following up with more front towers and catapults. Me defending with a Far seer and some Grunts. Oh so much fun!
Probably, not so much innovations in themselves, but I will always remember: - human zeppelin micro vs a nelf where all hu units were half dead yet forced dh to tp out(can’t remember the players) - SK.Deadman surrounding an AM with 1 hidden archer, DH and pulling the mobs from the shop camp Ah, good ol’ days
Lyn is the only orc who occasionally beats Happy these days although every time Happy seems to adapt. HOWEVER, there was a period(Last year I think? Max 2 years) where every orc would get close with mass zerkers and eventually lose to Dark Ranger 3rd, but Lyn fast tech'd into double beastiary. Unlike the common wyvern build we see today, Lyn had the willingness to go mass either of the 3 units via FS scouting! If UD went ghouls->Lyn rushed Wyverns timing, if UD went fiends->Lyn rushed Kodos timing(with a bit of ensnare to secure the meal), and the few times UD went fast Xpo to counter no orc units on the map->Lyn went mass raiders and pillaged. I remember being mind blown by this adaptability but like always SITH LORD DMITRY ADAPTED. Lyn recently won some games with fast tech JUKE into double rax zerkers but SITH LORD DMITRY will never not scout it again... Best option orcs seem to have now is fully teching into an army to bait UD 3rd hero(alchemist if wyvern/dark ranger if zerkers) and then COMPLETLY switch army compositions($), but even vs that big of an expense 120 started going Pit lord 3rd that isn't best vs any but does fine vs either. Happy hasn't needed the pit lord 3rd due to insane scouting and delaying 3rd hero until it's a safe bet but I BELIEVE IN WARCHIEF JUNE PARK 5HEAD TAKE MY ENERGY
The only meta rts thing that ever stuck with me was the Spanishiwa era of mass droning with zerg while using the bare minimum spine crawler and queen to defend. It was beautiful.
Hey Grubby I love these kinds of videos! It would be insanely cool if you would consider doing one about the top hypest tournaments of wc3 history because It would be nostalgic as all heck to watch some of them. The problem is I can't remember which ones were good and there are so many to look through!
I started enjoy w3 cybersport just around 2 years ago, that why can talk only about recent meta changes. The most I liked , how Sok changed meta twice in just one year. After Infi retired and some nerfs to race, human didn't win anything for years in tournaments, but in 2023, Sok suddenly understand something and started produce a lot of footmans in the early game, to defend himself or harass opponent. And human... started to win again. Now almost all human players use it. Forty adjusted timings in this strategy to perfection, and became solid №2 pro player in current w3 scene. Second was not that big. A bit later, in same 2023, Sok beat Happy with MK first hero, and for little time it became meta vs undead for several months.
I saw it on Raraland recently and I saw Fortitude vs Sok Spellbreaker+Priest army. It was beefy as hell and they are magic immune too and a pain for Heroes or any mana based units. I thought it was funny how they can't kill each other so fast and makes the clash so damn long.
Hey, Grub. Nice vid. I think someone should make the ultimate history of meta video. Even if it's 1+ hrs many people would watch it. I guess it would need the perspective of various players and yours have to be included, of course. This is like a small taste of what the project would be. Thanks for sharing this info. Cheers.
I only play against bots and don't really follow meta stuffs, but the armor-upgraded Archer I saw on your video was pretty fun. I run it a couple of times against Insane AI, and it's amazing how tanky units as brittle as Archers can feel even with just one armor upgrade (at least when against units, abilities like Fan of Knives can still melt them at that point).
I beat a top 50 na gm zerg (during peak bl infestor meta), in my college league with my own crazy build. I go cc first in my own base and wall off with 2 rax, he thought i was going for a fast 3 rax and i had a proxy so he plays careful then i go 2 port banshee with cloak on my 4 gasses and hit him after his mutas went across the map, killed so many drones i was free to make mech at home. expanded roasted over 100 drones and took out his weakened broodlord infestor army to win as a mere mid masters player. It was roughly based on a qxc build, he was always cooking up sneaky mindgame builds, great player, all killed team MVP. Dont forget
I'm not well versed in WC3, I just watch you because I like you and your content, but I'm a big fan and follower of the AoE2 scene and I was already rooting for Hera (current GOAT) when he was still kind of an underdog living under TheViper's shadow. Hera contributed by essentially stating and later on proving that the Hussar was not only the best trash unit in the game but that it was BY FAR the best one and any civ that lacked such an upgrade was at a massive disadvantage in the vast majority of games where gold ran out. Another thing he proved even though he received backlash at first was that "pikemen do not counter knights in early castle age", everyone thought he was delusional and now most people agree it's actually true, lol.
Happy literally has several stopwatch alarms at his desk, set to indicate different timing windows for certain enemy attacks windows (he did a room tour for Russian community not too long ago)
Headhunters always rocked since tft and didn’t need any buff other than the range that is acceptable but here is the trick. Tc first. Okay grub. By the way I was the creative force behind shortround- aka David Chan
Grubby, I feel you mix "creative" and "innovative". Being creative is easy. Just let your imagine run wild and do whatever idea you come up with. Innovation is coming up with some new and useful.
I am at the level of "get units before buying upgrades, or else Grubby will be angry". Coming up with a new meta just seems mind blowing
Same here 😂🤌
you mean you're new? if so you're already a better gamer than 99.99% of gamers considering RTS games are more complicated and hard to learn than every other type of game
Don't forget your first supply depot on 14 😂
It's especially interesting and noteworthy to affect the meta in the world of online build orders. You'd think someone would have tried everything, at some point.
Why would rts be the hardest to learn?
Zacard's DND strategy is actually coined as "the Fabian strategy". This strategy derives its name from Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, Roman Republic dictator given the task of defeating the great Carthaginian general Hannibal in southern Italy during the Second Punic War (218-201 BC).The Fabian is a military strategy still used today where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection.
Man, we need to make this a thing. Name all wc3 types of strategies after Sun Tzu manouvres, Fabian manouvres, etc.
bro, editor, you should put the link to this channel in your description and link it to the main channel, I had no idea this even existed and I've been subscribed to Grubby for years
Grubbytalks is linked in all videos on the main channel, but we haven't had a video intro to shout it out in a while, thanks for the suggestion!
@@NaldaxTV oh yeah its in the middle, I donno why I always looked past that for some reason, maybe ADHD, my bad, and for whatever reason it was never in the Related Videos for me either, not your fault, cheers
I love how grubby starts the video by saying, for the builds we may not mention the person who thought up the build, but certainly the one that made it popular and took it to high level gameplay. Then when he gets to the mass headhunters (a build he undoubtedly popularised), he fully credits SaveOrcas headhunter strat. What a freaking heart of gold.
that"s called hypocrisy
@@Loinvoyant78 you drunk?
@@Loinvoyant78 No? its not like at all its sticking to his principle he showed early in the video to a T you are regarded.
@@TanToRza ya mirin' bro ?
buddy people have been massing HH for 20 years
Bober’s TC/grunt/zeppelin rush with moonwell harass probably my favorite meta changing moment with Turbo’s pit lord/backpack/skeleton armor upgrade rush at close second
grubby u forgot the tyler1s meta shattering blademaster headhunter mass of 2024
truly magnificent
if he hadnt been betrayed by his apprentice, dantes, in the final moments who knows how far he could have gone!
they gotta make professional Esport players pause the game and start talking shit every 5 minutes, it would immediately double the viewer numbers for Esports
@@Ar1AnX1x That's the real Tyler1 meta
Fifth race era Moon could have a video all on his own.
Moon was dominant for so many years. Then came Happy
honorable mentions TeD for the fiend opener big ups to a retired legend
My claim to fame was back in 2013 heart of the swarm, in CSL, when I cheesed out some low level pro in TvP with 2-2 2base all in pulling the boys, two weeks before MVP did it in GSL.
To this day I still call it the jombozeus build. 0% chance MVP didn’t copy me!!
Bober was the main innovator of Warcraft, let's be real. The psychological effect of attacking the full wall-off to lul his opponent into a false sense of security, then a strike from the sky, with a zeppelin drop, taking out both the tree and every wisp in the base. A legend
That's a C&C strat that was around way before WC3.
I was watching this masterclass with great pleasure
In my humble opinion, there is a player named Melon that comes with the craziest ideas and strategies to redefine a new meta. His earth-shattering ideas often makes no sense but, over the course of a game, get shaped into a fine refined jewel that leaves his opponents in shock. If Melon had better English, I'm sure he would be better known in the Western world but, alas, he's struggling with even basic syntax. Surprised he didn't make your top 5!!!
e.g?
I love Grubby’s insistence on reminding everyone that a viewer of his is responsible for the headhunter discovery every time he brings it up, so wholesome
Grubby is such a great storyteller. And probably one of the best esports commentators, not just in WC3 scene.
Current UD vs HU meta (also introduced by Happy) is Crypt Lord first, which is also a really cool thing
I always enjoyed how MaDFroG introduced mass gargoyles.
Now that's a classic name to remember
@@ryu-kenI remember because it got mistyped as MADFORG once lol
Cool story about the mass Talon strat and all, but maybe you should have taken a minute to tell those of us who live under a rock how it works and what made it so scary? xD
Farie fire to lower your armor and cyclone to CC your units.
@@izicial7469and what was the counter?
@@kaimat12 From Grubby's reply: "Blade TC, Raider Walker, Shockwave and Healscroll map control".
One of the scary things about mass talons was the single target powerful crowd control that cyclone provided, being able to spam that on a Blademaster severely reduced the orc armies' dps, cyclone could be dispelled, but it was not cost efficient to use Spirit Walker disenchant, since there were lots of talons and only a few Spirit Walkers. Shamans were not popular in the orc meta at this time as their 2018 buffs had not been made yet.
Also orcs made a point of stacking dps items on Bladmaster during this time, which meant crowd control was even more cost effective vs. Blademaster. The Slow spell and Frost Armour were other ways of lowering blade dps, so they were popular vs. orc, too.
Most of Orc's damage comes from Blademaster damage. Mass talons pretty much remove Blademaster from the fight, to the point where people would use invul pots just so Blade could stay on the ground for 7 seconds and hit.
Orc had 3 grunts from early game, with Heavy armor. Magic damage, which Talons have, does double damage to units with heavy armor, so grunts would melt.
Talons are vulnerable to AOE damage, hence why everyone went TC shockwave into it. DH mana burn on TC though is really strong in preventing shockwave, especially since TC is strength hero with very little mana and mana regen and Orc is the worst race at gaining back mana.
With talons, both players did very little damage and fights were very extended. This meant that Orb of Venom did a LOT of damage inside late game fights.
Night Elf, when massing talons, already wants summons to pressure Spirit Walker mana. They can get Beastmaster second with a very fast tech and have a very strong spike with Quilbeasts and DH.
Burrows have heavy armor, therefore get one shotted by Talons and Fortified Defenses was tier 3 upgrade (now it's tier 2).
Most high level creeps in melee maps have heavy armor (most creeps really tbh), so talons kill them very quickly.
The main saving grace for Orc imo, is that Walkers have AOE dispell AND resistant skin, else they would also get cycloned and it would be even harder to deal with.
Pink Ward's zero income strat of using an inferior player to pillage his buildings with a single grunt in order to beat the strongest army on the map.
Best strat realization I had was watching a buddy way back in 2007ish. He rushed the enemy base with firelord, fast shadow and nothing else as an Orc and I was left gobsmacked. I never really gave any thought to summons until then, but that moment made me realize that what I saw as trash was actually pretty damn strong.
Helped me beat the campaign on hard mode! HAHA
Great video! Sweet memories from my childhood. I was buying one magazine about computer games. And as an addition I was getting a CD with content, including cybersport matches. It was my best part: all of these games of pros, like Grubby, TH000, Sky… Thank you! Never thought I will be watching your videos like 15 years later ❤
Please give us the 6 hours version of you explaining innovative strats back then and today! And what I also would enjoy watching: You commenting great games of the past of the big names (incl. urself). Where you point out great plays that we casual players would't even be able to acknowledge ;) Oh and some more DC explanatory content pls ;)
My favorite moment was when Grubby decided to do that 6-hour video on all WC3 meta changes ever!
Fastest way to get to a creative level is to follow preestablished routines by people in the same field. in RTS=Follow build orders till you integrate the cadence of income to production to action to focus to an automatic state at which point distribution of focus becomes much easier. When you get to that point you are much more cognizant of the impact of any deviation from the ideal and a lot of the creativity comes from circumventing or supplanting the negatives that come from stepping outside of an established order.
You'll be able to step into an analytical mindframe so much faster if you just follow what other people do because when you are starting out there is an overstimulation from all the aspects of the game. Your focus will flit to and fro from creeping, to scouting, to producing and it feels like if you blink you'll have a four figure bank. That hyper fixation makes it hard to breathe and zoom out to see the game from a different perspective. And that's the perspective that generally fosters the most free flowing sort of mind state. Edit: this was intended as a reply to dude who was starting out
Awesome video ! Thank you ! :)))
Once again a big thank you Grubby for sharing your passion, I remember the first matches where your name appeared on the replay sites, where I read rumors about you that justified your precocity by the fact that you were a young pianist! lol
To come back to your video, as a fan of warcraft and starcraft since the beginning, I followed hundreds (thousands?) of matches live or in replay! It's my football ;)
In my old memories of the beginning of warcraft III, what had amazed me in the evolutions of the meta of this nascent game, was the aggressive use by the NE of their building in the enemy bases and in their creeping. It seems so natural and obvious today! But at the time it was worthy of a cheese and even posed a balancing problem, so much the spam of war tree in the enemy base was problematic!
More recently what I particularly enjoyed was Happy's use of the Creep Lord (following his buffs) in his matches against the HU. Who doesn't enjoy watching a Happy vs fortitude arm wrestling match? :)
Long live WC III!
Those stories about the past, combined with some hidden insides are my favourite)
In 2010 i started watching Grubby vs Moon matches to learn and adapt new strats to my NE and Orc . Seeing the mass DoT was a trip down memory lane! I got in the top 100s in solo and duo (US East). Thank you for your teachings Master Grubby 🙏🏻.
That intro about creativity reminded me about the Bronze League game where all of our minds were blown by the calculated math to make a tavern hero opener work in undead. As a scrub, I couldn't tell if my "innovative build order" is any good, but it amazes me that there's potential in something so unlike the RTS elements of WC3 and instead goes all in on the RPG aspect of rushing a tavern hero. There's surely got to be other tavern hero openers like that which can be discovered in both UD and other races.
Thank you, Grubby, for being a member of this community! Your contributions are important!
It was the time when we and my best friend had the only way to follow you Grubs - watching your replays. I was a fan of MaDFroG and my visavi would follow 4 kings and Grubby. We were playing 1v1s dozens of time during each week,and it seemed like we were training and preparing for something big. Then one day, my friend showed me the power building human with fast altar/farm, then training free hero and then immidiately upgrading to keep, loosing economy to get the fastest 2nd hero from the tavern possible. It was very pivoting mindset so I've started to play this with summon heroes and as much mercenaries on the map as possible hired all the time. It was very different and awkward Warcraft for me,but I'm still thinking if pro level player would commit to it,it will be monstrosity that crushes. Thanks for bringing up those memories,man,good vid
Loved this talk man. I always especially loved this creative part of the meta perspective of an rts and wc3 in particular. Would love to see more vids in this direction ❤❤❤
I love that those games between Moon and Zackard are on RUclips, I remember that you mentioned it on stream so I watched them all (as well as you against Zackard) and that last game was definitely amazing as you said.
I still remember the first time I saw militia creeping and expansion on LT, circa 2003, when I started playing online and watching replays. I was in awe that you could do this and it works.
It's still a cornerstone of HU early game today.
The only thing I'm familiar with is Bisu dubbed "the revolutionist" who was considered a fresh face in the BW scene back then, practically inventing the modern PvZ playbook, which used to be so bad with a wr of
Hey some of us consider him one!
It’s an interesting one, I’m hoping one day there’ll be a big Netflix or something documentary on the history of pro BW, so many great stories yet to be told.
I’d love to know the origin of the ‘Bisu build’ especially.
It’s really only with pro houses of quality players, closed off that you see something emerge seemingly from nowhere and 3-0 sweep the player considered almost unbeatable in ZvP
I have heard it said various parts of this strat were workshopped and experimented with, but it needed Bisu’s mechanics to pull it off. He may not have the greatest macro or micro of all time, I struggle to think of a better multitasker though, which fits this strat like a glove
I’m not sure how true that is but I’d love to find out one day
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on these, it's hard to imagine the impact of different strategies for us casual players as mere audience.
Sky is as close as we can get to a national hero in esports. Later players of LoL and DotA 2 might have more fans but he was like 80% of the reason video games was no longer seen as a self-destructive habit like gambling in China. Back then we talked more about how consistent and disciplined he was, not realizing coming up with an extremely effective strategy is just as amazing.
I had the same initial reaction as Grubby seeing Moon's mass DoT for the first time, and didn't realized how OP it was until I got destroyed by it.
Frozen armor on fiends and heroes against blade master was used by Ted and won him the world championship, if I remember correctly. Prior to that frozen armor spell was totally underestimated and never used.
As someone who played in the 2003-2010 era but not much after that:
I'm not 100% sure if he invented it but the American player ShrieK was the first human I saw do MASS towers (2004-05 or so?). Before him people would build a few towers and they could be taken down by destroyers or bears. He built.. TONS of towers and played a strong macro game, then followed it up with mass workshop which I hadn't seen from other players at that time. That turned into fairly meta human shortly after that. He wasn't a great micro player but had some really interesting macro ideas.
Another one that comes to mind was the circlet buying and general item stacking approach on DH and BM. I think Shortround won WCG primarily based on that strat in a patch when circlet was very cheap at the shop.
Grubby: who have you seen give creative contributions
all the bronze league heroes that Grubby covers of course
To answer your question, I think the most creative strategy I've seen recently is the double altar
Wait so what ended up being the counter to mass Druids of the Talon?
Nerfed in a patch
It was anti-orc strat. Orcs got buff for Reinforced Defenses and available on t2.
Shaman + HH combo was strong counter, shaman purge priority target. And finally Shadow carry. SH Serpent wards smack DOTs.
Blade TC, Raider Walker, Shockwave and Healscroll map control
Siege engines gonna be meta now to counter those proxy necro 5 stacks.
i always enjoyed watching Th000 play human. his bloodmage/mk/paladin combo looked nasty to play against (really nuked undead with banish,storm bolt,holy light) and had some other creative play with zeppelins and whatnot
This is what I am here for. Grubby and talking
My favorite innovation was Crowjam playing bloodmage first/second in many matchups from 2007-2013 and it taking over 10 years to catch on and become meta.
I distinctly remember a period of time in which Farseer was the meta for orc, and there was a guy by the name of CADX2Craft who always went Blademaster first and really showed the potential it had way before it was the meta.
Grubby once said on previous video that Asian player is more at perfecting control and microgame while Euro player are more creative with strategy. Well, 3 out of the 5 META DEFINING innovation are from Asian player!
BTW I felt like Orc always has a disadvantage against NE with mass druid of the telon until they finally buffed the Serpent Ward of SH.
Sounds more like a paradigm shift rather than innovation. Thanks for the content, just getting back in to WC3 and love your vids!
Grubby 6 hour meta iceberg vid when?
TeD. The single reason I started playing Undead. When I saw him playing against Fly in WCG I thought this race is so damn cool and underrated, I have to play it. The Ted fiend build was a revolution
Actually laughing out loud at saveorcas forcing his backseat gimmick build into the world scene and it works. One of the funniest things I've heard in gaming
I'm sure Moon played C&C Red Alert as well at one time. He was really nice on forums like either Xwis, Revora or it might have been Relicnews from what I remember of him
This is going back many years, however. 2008-2015 at least.
A strategy I messed around with in the past was Night Elf but Tinker, then get Faerie Fire and use Acid Bomb, the two stack and you can be hitting things for true damage from what I remember
Just doesn't exactly go well into the Blood Elves that can debuff you with the acid debuff
A math professor passionate about a game he loves dearly, giving abstract ideas for pros to test while not playing themself is anime-level stuff. Gogo, SaveOrcas. Also a great map creator. I'd like some credits to be given to KiwiKaki as well. The Canadian player, though not completely driven by logic and experiment like SaveOrcas, had some unique HH builds, which worked for him and was pretty entertaining.
I think moon invented merc pulls (in order to hire mercs without actually creeping the camp) way back in the day..
i remember when they changed Terenas Stand because moon came up with the idea to pull creeps out to hire mercs right at the start of the game (back then TS mercs had ensnare) and it was unbeatable
I think that it was also Moon that came up with kotg + mass fairies vs undead
I think madfrog invented the mass garg style vs elf
insomnia invented militia creeping
ted changed UD in many ways too, his use of wyrms with frost armor for example, and he made frost armor popular vs orcs, before him nobody ever used that spell
also solo pala fast expo vs UD by TH000
He did, he was doing it back in 2005-2006. The 2006 version of Terenas Stand had a Murloc Huntsman that can ensnare, hireable from second 0 into the game. Was so imba xD
getting tower rushed by takers Orc in the early years of WC3 on a tournament. I will never forget. Towers in the wood shooting my lumber peons. and following up with more front towers and catapults. Me defending with a Far seer and some Grunts. Oh so much fun!
Probably, not so much innovations in themselves, but I will always remember:
- human zeppelin micro vs a nelf where all hu units were half dead yet forced dh to tp out(can’t remember the players)
- SK.Deadman surrounding an AM with 1 hidden archer, DH and pulling the mobs from the shop camp
Ah, good ol’ days
In CnC 3: Kane's Wrath a player called masterleaf came up with many new strats and his most famous one was the "Rig rush"
Lyn is the only orc who occasionally beats Happy these days although every time Happy seems to adapt. HOWEVER, there was a period(Last year I think? Max 2 years) where every orc would get close with mass zerkers and eventually lose to Dark Ranger 3rd, but Lyn fast tech'd into double beastiary. Unlike the common wyvern build we see today, Lyn had the willingness to go mass either of the 3 units via FS scouting! If UD went ghouls->Lyn rushed Wyverns timing, if UD went fiends->Lyn rushed Kodos timing(with a bit of ensnare to secure the meal), and the few times UD went fast Xpo to counter no orc units on the map->Lyn went mass raiders and pillaged. I remember being mind blown by this adaptability but like always SITH LORD DMITRY ADAPTED. Lyn recently won some games with fast tech JUKE into double rax zerkers but SITH LORD DMITRY will never not scout it again... Best option orcs seem to have now is fully teching into an army to bait UD 3rd hero(alchemist if wyvern/dark ranger if zerkers) and then COMPLETLY switch army compositions($), but even vs that big of an expense 120 started going Pit lord 3rd that isn't best vs any but does fine vs either. Happy hasn't needed the pit lord 3rd due to insane scouting and delaying 3rd hero until it's a safe bet but I BELIEVE IN WARCHIEF JUNE PARK 5HEAD TAKE MY ENERGY
Literally watching this after watching the video with Turbo.
What Turbo did was creativity xD
video title?
@@173u4y It's on Grubbyplays, his newest one
i really appreciate the GrubbyTalks format
Very interesting video! Thanks Grubby!
I'll go with the first thing that comes to mind and that would be "Ted fiends".
Haven’t seen the whole video yet, but SK.insomnia with human FX has to be there
loved the video, damn I wish I could watch these games with commentary
The only meta rts thing that ever stuck with me was the Spanishiwa era of mass droning with zerg while using the bare minimum spine crawler and queen to defend.
It was beautiful.
Hey Grubby I love these kinds of videos!
It would be insanely cool if you would consider doing one about the top hypest tournaments of wc3 history because It would be nostalgic as all heck to watch some of them. The problem is I can't remember which ones were good and there are so many to look through!
It would be awesome if Grubby did a video series about all the pros like Moon, Happy, Tod, Fly and talk about their games and stuff.
Love hearing these tales from when grubby was a young warchief
Damn, increadible video.
So many big brains changing the game.
Awesome video Grubby! Made me rewatch your bo5 with happy. God damn you crushed him the first 2 games.
I wanna mention that Neo did say 2018 that he thinks Shadow first is the new meta, not a complete strategy, but he saw something back then aswell
Would love to see more of these Warcraft 3 histories :)
Moon is a legend
Tyler1 charging everything in is the biggest contribution to WC3.
I started enjoy w3 cybersport just around 2 years ago, that why can talk only about recent meta changes. The most I liked , how Sok changed meta twice in just one year.
After Infi retired and some nerfs to race, human didn't win anything for years in tournaments, but in 2023, Sok suddenly understand something and started produce a lot of footmans in the early game, to defend himself or harass opponent. And human... started to win again. Now almost all human players use it. Forty adjusted timings in this strategy to perfection, and became solid №2 pro player in current w3 scene.
Second was not that big. A bit later, in same 2023, Sok beat Happy with MK first hero, and for little time it became meta vs undead for several months.
“Hello, Manuel here”
I think that would be a nice touch to the videos.
I saw it on Raraland recently and I saw Fortitude vs Sok Spellbreaker+Priest army. It was beefy as hell and they are magic immune too and a pain for Heroes or any mana based units. I thought it was funny how they can't kill each other so fast and makes the clash so damn long.
Hey, Grub. Nice vid. I think someone should make the ultimate history of meta video. Even if it's 1+ hrs many people would watch it. I guess it would need the perspective of various players and yours have to be included, of course. This is like a small taste of what the project would be. Thanks for sharing this info. Cheers.
I only play against bots and don't really follow meta stuffs, but the armor-upgraded Archer I saw on your video was pretty fun.
I run it a couple of times against Insane AI, and it's amazing how tanky units as brittle as Archers can feel even with just one armor upgrade (at least when against units, abilities like Fan of Knives can still melt them at that point).
I love listening to storytime with Uncle Grub ❤
Would be cool to see a Grubby + Uthermal WC3 video.
Since I followed you mostly I loved the mass raiders meta. They were really oppressive on engagements forcing opponents to react to your terms.
Bisu changing PvZ with corsair/Dt was epic
Happy is an outstanding moment.
Turbo is the new meta
I beat a top 50 na gm zerg (during peak bl infestor meta), in my college league with my own crazy build. I go cc first in my own base and wall off with 2 rax, he thought i was going for a fast 3 rax and i had a proxy so he plays careful then i go 2 port banshee with cloak on my 4 gasses and hit him after his mutas went across the map, killed so many drones i was free to make mech at home. expanded roasted over 100 drones and took out his weakened broodlord infestor army to win as a mere mid masters player. It was roughly based on a qxc build, he was always cooking up sneaky mindgame builds, great player, all killed team MVP. Dont forget
Haha that sounds awesome :>
Amazing video . Crazy how often beast master was played . I never see him now :(
Love WC3 history by Grubby ❤
I'm not well versed in WC3, I just watch you because I like you and your content, but I'm a big fan and follower of the AoE2 scene and I was already rooting for Hera (current GOAT) when he was still kind of an underdog living under TheViper's shadow.
Hera contributed by essentially stating and later on proving that the Hussar was not only the best trash unit in the game but that it was BY FAR the best one and any civ that lacked such an upgrade was at a massive disadvantage in the vast majority of games where gold ran out. Another thing he proved even though he received backlash at first was that "pikemen do not counter knights in early castle age", everyone thought he was delusional and now most people agree it's actually true, lol.
Would love some warcraft 3 history videos taking about those older strategies and why they developed
19:07 yes... the edits on the "recently" was a nice touch to his sarcasm, which was not intentional.
Happy literally has several stopwatch alarms at his desk, set to indicate different timing windows for certain enemy attacks windows (he did a room tour for Russian community not too long ago)
Proof? Seems wild
Love these videos. More on professional wc3 history please
23:50 wow that marine micro is impressive
Dude that blew my mind too. It's like OpenAI controlling
What a cool celebration of the wc3 pro scene
Headhunters always rocked since tft and didn’t need any buff other than the range that is acceptable but here is the trick. Tc first. Okay grub. By the way I was the creative force behind shortround- aka David Chan
I think Creolophus popularized using AoW creeping had massive influence on NE playstyle.
Grubby, I feel you mix "creative" and "innovative". Being creative is easy. Just let your imagine run wild and do whatever idea you come up with. Innovation is coming up with some new and useful.
Pleease please you need to do a stream with SaveOrcas!! He is such a legend!
I made a strat once of going altar first, and it has become the meta now. I feel bad that everyone keeps copying the build i came up with
I love these kind of videos
I always thought Tak3r was one of the most creative player with his tower shenanigans.