Unit Spotlight: Sorceress

Human Spellcaster

SORCERESS

Trained from: Arcane Sanctuary
Requires: Research to Tier 2 (Keep)
Cost: 155 gold, 20 lumber
Population: 2 food

"The flows of magic are whimsical today." I thought I would do a unit spotlight on the Sorceress first because she is one of my favorite units in the game. There is certainly a bias towards spellcasters when it comes to my unit favorites. The Sorceress is the Human equivalent of the Undead Banshee, Orc Shaman, and Night Elf Druid of the Talon. She starts out with one spell available, like all spellcasters in Warcraft 3, and gains two more after research. Her starting spell is Slow, followed by Invisibility in Sorceress Adept Training (Rank 1). She gets Polymorph at Sorceress Master Training (Rank 2). Each rank gives her a larger mana pool as well.

Now, why is the Sorceress so special? She is good because of a variety of reasons. The biggest reason is that she fights alongside the Archmage. If you read my hero article on the Archmage, you would know that his Brilliance Aura dumps mana into all units around him. This includes the Sorceress, who spams her abilities like crazy during a battle. Without the Archmage, she is an O.K. unit. Her mana can run dry, especially when Polymorph comes into play. However, Brilliance Aura keeps her topped off throughout a match, giving the Humans an untold advantage. She does not work very well against an enemy Human mirror match. Spell Breakers will rip the poor Sorceress army to shreds. Against Orcs, Night Elves, and Undead however, she is quite potent.

Abilities (Hotkey):

Slow (W)
Slows a target enemy unit's attack rate by 25% and movement speed by 60%.

Slow is on autocast by default, so whenever the sorceress goes into combat, she casts it on any enemy unit that does not allready have it on them. Autocast can be disabled by right-clicking on the spell icon. If the enemy does not have a unit that can dispell this magic debuff, their army will be in serious trouble. This spell lowers an army's DPS by 25% and makes them unable to escape a battle by running away. Slow is autocast as I said before. Dispell is not autocast on any unit except the Night Elf Dryad, and the Ai (Artificial Intellegence) autocasts dispell rather poorly. So this means that the player will have to manually dispell their army, going to a lot of work only to have the sorceresses put Slow on the enemy units again. It's a fantastic spell.



Invisibility (I) Requires Sorceress Adept Training
Makes a target unit invisible. If the unit attacks, uses an ability or casts a spell, it will become visible.

This spell is under used and under rated. It's very unfortunate that not too many players see the power of the Adept trained Sorceress. Units can scout without worry of being picked off by the enemy or creeps for one. Secondly and most importantly, sorceresses can use invisibilty on units that are about to die in a battle. The unit will take loads of damage and then poof. The unit dissappears right under the enemy player's nose. It is free to run back to base or wait a safe distance away for the fight to end. Lastly, if the Archmage gets to level 6, an invisible unit can run into an enemy base or expansion and crash land the entire Human army at the enemy player's most vulnerable spot. 20 seconds later, the army can escape with another Mass Teleport to safety if needed.



Polymorph (O) Requires Research to Tier 3 (Castle) and Sorceress Master Training
Turns a target enemy unit into a sheep or flying sheep. The targeted unit retains its hit points, but cannot attack. Cannot be cast on Heroes or Summoned units.

Contrasting the adept-trained invisibility, the master-trained Polymorph is slightly overrated but no less powerful sorceress spell. By the time you have gotten to master training on your sorceresses, your enemy has probably scouted your small batallion of spellcasters. A good player would have gotten a unit capable of dispelling magic by now. However, it still causes people to have to manually dispell things while you get to focus on the killing spree. And hey! If you are able to sheep all the dispell units, then you are at a huge advantage! The downside is that Polymorph costs 220 mana, which is a lot. Without the Archmage's aura, you get about 2 polymorph per Sorceress (who have a max of 400 mana with master training). If you want to use this as a strategy, you better have a Brilliance Aura Archmage to back it up!


Happy reading!
- Kibble