Originally posted by: Majes
I've really found it difficult to play other RTS games after playing W3...
Since I was up around 200 APM in competitive games I tend to sit in other RTS games and just watch the action. Moving squads around trying to save them like I did with individual units during W3 games is futile and useless in other RTS titles.
No other RTS has ever put a premium on every single unit like W3 does... Heck! I was one of the people who used to argue for killing your own units in that game when they were going to die any way so that your opponent wouldnt gain experience. I for one appreciate that. But if you want massive battles where individual units dont really matter, play something else.
This is exactly why there's such a learning curve. Warcraft III IS NOT a game where you can build a massive army, attack the other player's massive army, die, create a new massive army, etc. and expect to win. Most matches are NOT like casual Starcraft, Warcraft II, Total Annihilation, Command & Conquer (older ones at least), Age of Empires, etc.
Before you give up and deem it as too hard, first learn what each unit is good for. All races have units designed for specific purposes - melee "tanking," anti-air, air-to-ground, air-to-air, siege, etc. For example, Human Knights, Undead Abominations, Night Elf Druids of the Claw (bear form) / Mountain Giants, and Orc Tauren are designed to be high health melee tanks. With solo play, you can go a long way just by having a good number of melee tanks coupled with some lower health, high damage ranged / air-air units in the back. Throw in some CC and siege and you're ready for anything.
Once you know what you want to build, figure out the quickest way to build it. Each unique requires a specific building, and each building has other prerequisite buildings. Find the quickest path to build what you want and practice getting there.
After you have the basics down, it's all about hero management (killing creeps to level up, using your Town Portal scroll to save your hero and remaining army rather than being killed and granting enemies experience), and micro management. Micro management, such as healing units that are getting low or casting non-autocast debuffs on enemies, is what really sets you apart from the beginners. Once you've played enough for most situations to be automatic ("oh crap, my army is all air and they have tons of anti-air, time to run away..." or "they're focusing attacks on my hero, time to use Invulnerability or run him to the back of my army") you can focus on the little things that make a big difference in the end. Something as simple as using a Scroll of Protection and Scroll of healing during a fight makes a huge difference in the outcome. Throwing down some healing wards or casing cyclone to disable 4-5 of their units will often make or break a fight.
Overall, it's a great game. As with any new game it takes a while to get used to. I didn't really start doing well until I racked up 30-50 losses (with about 10-15 wins) in multiplayer.
I love DotA as well, but I haven't played it about two years. Now I'm so far behind the learning curve it'll be hard to catch up.
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