Send the first four wisps into the goldmine. The 5th should build an Altar of Elders. Use the Tree of Life to create more wisps, send the 6th to build a Moonwell and let the 7th gather lumber. The 8th should go right into the goldmine, while 9th the will build an Ancient of War (AoW). The 10th will gather lumber just like the 7th. When you possess 40 lumber, build another Moonwell. Your first hero should be the Demon Hunter (DH). Afterwards, you should have 20 supply with 13 wisps, your hero and one archer.
This is the Build Order (BO) for normal games.
If you want to play Mass Hunts (Creating a lot of huntresses to attack your opponent early in the match), you should change your build order a little bit: The first 6 wisps will do the same, but instead, continue creating wisps to gather lumber until you possess 160 lumber. Then with two wisps, start your Hunter's Hall (HH) and the Ancient of War at the same time. At the time both buildings have finished, start creating as many Huntresses as you can. And don't forget to build Moonwells if you have enough lumber (40 pieces are required). At last, don't forget to choose the Priestess of the Moon (PotM) as your first hero, because her aura is better for huntresses than the auras of other heroes.
In general, the NE units are all very diverse and useful; thus, a few additional units mixed in with a main fighting force can drastically improve an army. Even a small change, a Hunt for a Druid of the Claw with no upgrades, then with very little work you just boosted the damage of your army by 25%. Take another Hunt for a Druid of the Talon: a cast of Faerie Fire removes 4 armor points. In terms of effective health, that's about 115 damage to an fully upgraded Grunt, and about 160 damage to a fully upgraded Tauren! That isn't half bad for 45 mana, and an auto-cast spell to boot! When building an army, it is important to recognize the small things that can make your army all the more powerful.
A units effective health is its armor converted into an equivalent amount of health, and added to its base health. Converting Faerie Fire's armor reduction into effective health loss depends on the targeted units health and armor at time of casting. The less armor a unit has, the more effective health is lost. A completely un-upgraded Tauren looses about 275 effective health from Faerie Fire.
Against Human[edit]
Build huntresses instead of archers as the backbone of your army, as the Human Footman have Defend, which kills your archers' attacks. Although early archers (6-7) can be quite affective against undefended footmen, make sure start producing hunters before the human upgrades the footmen. Remember to scout well since Humans can expand quickly. Also, later in the game, build 5-6 Faerie Dragons since your enemy will certainly use and rely on lots of spell casters, and your Faerie Dragons will just hover there and damage them repeatedly with Mana Flare as you fight the main battle. As always, adjust your strategy to the situation.
- Anti-Rush
- Be sure to not leave your main base with your hero and two archers (you did build that to start, right?) for a little while at the start of the game. This is to defend against the tower rush which can kill you if you are not there to cut it off right as it starts. Once you have a total of three archers, you may leave your base, but be sure to keep at least one (two is better) archers back in the base to kill the peasants that may run into your base and start building.
- Anti-Tower rush
- Humans are known to tower rush on small maps. This can be quite difficult for a NE, especially when trying to produce hunters. In order to best counter a tower rush uproot any Ancients (besides tree of life) and attack the towers or peasants. If their are no available Ancients, you could even uproot your Tree of Life as a failed tower rush will damage the human enough to make up for the loss of your entangled gold mine.
Against Orc[edit]
Priestess of the Moon with her Scout ability is a good counter against that pesky Blademaster and his Wind Walk. Proper utilization of dust from a goblin or night elf shop also counters a blademaster. try to dust before the blade master wind walks so your units dont untarget him. Use huntresses in conjunction with the Priestess as a main force, and back up with lots of Dryads and Faerie Dragons, since Orcs are absolutely guaranteed to try to use Bloodlust as their winning strategy, and your Dryads will dispel it from their units, and the Faerie Dragons will kill their shamans, all as you are winning the battle. Add archers or hippogryphs to counter any wyverns.
Dryads are not effective against wyverns as their high piercing damage will wreck dryad's unarmored rating.
Make sure to keep a few Archers and one Dryad in your base at all time, just in case they send in a lone Raider trying to do damage while your main force is gone. The Dryad will be able to poison the Raider and the Archers will dish out the damage. If the Raider starts to attack your Dryad or any of your Archers, run them to a Moon Well. Take full advantage of the fact that an NE expansion cheaper and less time-consuming then an orc expansion.
Against Night Elf[edit]
Large amounts of Hippogryph Riders are an excellent and unexpected way to kill Night Elf players. Use hit and run tactics, and be sure to have plenty of Bears on the ground, backed up by lots of siege. You will attack their base from behind with the Riders, and when they respond by moving their whole army in that direction, move in from the other side with Bears and siege, taking out their buildings. As they run towards the bears, pick them off one by one by focusing fire from the Riders. This is highly effective unless they are massing Towers.
- Anti-Tower
- Build three to four Mountain Giants and be sure to give them Hardened Skin. Back up with Druid of the Claws that can cast Rejuvenation. Go straight for their Towers, and have ONE of the Mountain Giants cast Taunt, and then keep healing him as the others go to town on the Towers.
Against Undead[edit]
Always use Mountain Giants, because they are excellent against both massed Ghouls and Crypt Fiends. Use the Warden hero to Fan of Knives your enemies' units as they group around the Mountain Giant, which casts Taunt repeatedly. Huntresses are the key to success, as are Druids of the Talon casting Cyclone on their Abominations to keep them tied up while you kill their other units. Remember to bring siege along even if you don't usually like to, since Undead have a built-in tower defense which is very powerful.
Always, buy Dust of Appearance to counter buried Crypt Fiends. Many players will rely on burying their Fiends if they are out numbered, and wait for you to leave. You can use the Dust and easily kill two to three of them before they have a chance to unbury and run away. Never produce air units like Chimera or Hippogryph riders against undead, as the undead are highly capable of dealing excessive damage to air units: their crypt fiends can easily web flying units while heavier units like Abominations or crowds of skeletons clean them up.
Another good strategy to use is Dryads -> bears. Demon Hunter is great hero choice for this, with immolation to defeat a ghoul rush. Ignore the enemy hero to quickly defeat the ghouls. The second Hero may either be Pandarian Brewmaster if your opponent is massing ghouls or gargoyles. Beastmaster otherwise. Constant harassment is the key to success with this one.
2on2 with Human[edit]
The human player should create an alter and a farm, from then on he should feed you only using resources to build up his economy. This way you can get super fast hunts, as fast as one would normally get archers. Keeper of the grove is the best hero for this, as you can catch and kill early riflemen before they have enough of them to kill your hunt army. For this strategy to work it is imperative that one player is eliminated before they can tower (meaning 3-4 towers) and tech. If they tower and tech the human should stop feeding and create rifle/mort. The Night elf should take advantage of it's hunt-assisted map control, tower and tech.
Another strategy is when work is divided so that the humans try to mass troops and the night elves get the resources since the night elves will never run out of trees and don't need to walk back and forth between the their base to transfer lumber and gold. It all starts when the human player transfers gold and lumber to the night elf player to build another tree of life next to the goldmine of the human player. The human player continues getting gold and the night elf player gets wisps to build 3 moon wells, a hunter's hall and an alter. Once the tree of life is finished, the night elf player to send wisps into the gold mine to start collecting gold. The night elf player then needs to create a hero and start to trade resources to the human player (using allies, then click on the resources that need to be traded then pressing accept), the human player will build an alter, 2 barracks, many farms, and a blacksmith.
As soon as a army of footmen and rifle men have been created, then the players go and attack the enemy base as soon as possible. The night elf player should bring along their hero and some wisps to offensive tower by building their ancient protectors in the middle of battle while renewing their currently building ancient protectors. The human player should continue to send reinforcements as well as tech up into tier 2 then 3, the night elf player will have to replace the used wisps, create settlements of a tree of life and 3-4 ancient protectors at each taken over base, get another hero for tier 2, and it helps to upgrade to tier 2 to get Nature's Blessing (will help your ancient protectors move from battle to battle).
The advantages of this strategy is that the humans and night elves will try to beat the other team using more efficiently collected resources, more technology, and no need to worry about upkeep since the humans don't collect gold and with 3 moon wells and another tree of life, the night elves should never cross 50/100 food so they will always collect full gold.
2on2 with Orc[edit]
Hunters and Grunts can work quite well, allowing you to overwhelm your opponents with mass melee right as they attempt to transition from Tier one into Tier two. You should eliminate a base at or before this stage of the game, before the enemy builds air units.
2on2 with Night Elf[edit]
The easiest way to confuse your enemy with the Night Elves is to use the nighttime abilities to your advantage. During the day, you should focus on building up a defense and creeping your Hero, but as night falls, place scouts, expand, and use the Hide ability often. The Hide ability will break the enemy's target on a unit and it will simply disappear until it casts a spell, uses an ability, or is revealed by stealth detection or AOE abilities. A good tactic is to use the Tree of Life to eat a pathway into a forest near a gold mine and place him in the trees to hide him and be able to entangle the gold mine. Most players won't look in the forest for a Night Elf tree.
Another effective tactic (only usable if there is one way in/out of your base), is to purchase a Moonstone as often as possible and continue to keep it nighttime. Use the Huntress' Hide ability and line them up, using them as an invisible wall against all land units attempting to enter your base. Most, if not all, players will not know what is going on and why they can't get past that point. Most will think it's a glitch. Another good way to preserve your units is to uproot a spare Tree of Life and move it to a creep point with one of your heroes and use it to fight the creeps. Most can be killed easily with this strategy, and you don't waste units doing it.
Afterwards, you can eat trees to regain your base's health and root yourself near the gold mine or area you just cleared out. Also, if you're going against a team of Night Elves, place one Wisp in their base, and use it to harvest lumber. They won't even notice that you have a unit in their base. This won't work against attentive players, but most place their Wisps in trees and simply forget about them unless they need them for something. So place it somewhere behind some trees to better hide it.
2on2 with Undead[edit]
Usually, the best start is to have Hunts plus Fiends with PotM and DK, this can lead into a very nice rush attack that will required micro from your opponents. In later game, the idea is to get Bears and Frosts.