(12) Azeroth Arena Tournament

Azeroth Arena Tournament is a multiplayer dedicated WarCraft III map, designed for both competitive and casual play, nevertheless being a fun and entertaining map.

The map features 39 heroes, each one with his own spells.
All heroes are divided into 5 classes : Melee, Ranged, Casters, Support and Hybrids.

Melee heroes are designed to be very resistant, yet very fragile when attacked from distance. They are usually snared, slowed etc. by other heroes. Their melee range attacks are still very powerful. Most of them are strength based, but there also are a couple that have agility as primary stat.

Ranged heroes are the ranged auto-attack main damage dealers. All of them have agility as primary stat, that meaning that they have increased armor, therefore more durable versus melee attacks.

Spellcasters are the third type of heroes. They deal high amounts of damage at the cost of mana. However, they are not very durable, having low hp and armor. This is why they have increased spell damage and some slowing or other debuffs (such as polymorph).

Support heroes represent the healing class. They stay behind and heal or buff friendly units. They are even more fragile than spellcasters, but they are excellent at healing and buffing.

Hybrid heroes are basically heroes that can do everything, but they aren't good at either of them. They can heal, buff or deal damage, but, compared to the other classes, they aren't so efficient. Nevertheless they can be used for multiple tasks, making them the most flexible class in the game.

AAT also features 9 arenas, each one with it's own unique layout. All arenas require different tactics because of their design.

The map is designed as a match between two teams, having rounds (one for each arena), at the end of which players will have a small brake where they can discuss tactics or buy items.

AAT supports up to 10 players and 2 spectator slots. It supports matches from 1 v 1 up to 5 v 5.

The project started back in July 2008 and had a great public beta session. Since the release, AAT has received a lot of upgrades and improvements, new content and a growing player base.

Version 1.5 notes :
-added the item recipe system
-added Unique items and Artifacts at the Legendary Item Shop
-added a new camera system
-small terrain improvements and changes
-small User Interface changes
-worked on spell tooltips
-Fountain of Health bug fixed
-Pheonix bug fixed
-small bug fixes
-added a recipe tutorial at the Info Tab(F9)
-greatly improved overall map size, loading time and performance

I would like to thank all testers who continued to send me feedback and suggestions. There is still much work to be done, but the map evolves with each new version.

Honestly there was no real distinction between the classes, since all heroes were made of melee skills randomly lumped topgether.

Another thing of note was that the map was extremly abusable, blood mage could send his phoenix into the enemy teams base to harass palyers outside the arena.

Plus Fountain of health doesnt work.

Yes, thank you for posting about the Fountain of Health bug. In the new version it has been fixed.

People also had sent me some suggestions about what should I do about the Phoenix. Some said to remove it, while others said to add some defensive towers for each base.
In the 1.5 patch I have came up with another idea : now Phoenix is considered a land unit, and can no longer fly over the walls.
Adding some pathing blockers would have been another idea, but, because of it's size, adding hundreds of pathing blockers isn't such a good thing to do, especially for overall map performance.

As for the classes, well there is a big difference between them, and that is the hero's position in a group fight. While some have the necessary health to rush between 5 enemies, some need to stay out of enemy fire, because they are much more fragile.
I have updated my first post with a small description about each hero class in-game. Hope it helps.

Thank you for your feedback.

Version 1.5 was released today.
Patch notes below :

Hidden information: -added the item recipe system -added Unique items and Artifacts at the Legendary Item Shop -added a new camera system -small terrain improvements and changes -small User Interface changes -worked on spell tooltips -Fountain of Health bug fixed -Pheonix bug fixed -small bug fixes -added a recipe tutorial at the Info Tab(F9) -greatly improved overall map size, loading time and performance

Download link for the new version can be found as an attachment in the first post.

Ok melee heroes can tank better than ranged but really dont see a difference between the "ranged" and "caster" class.

Well, as I said, Ranged heroes are the ranged auto-attack champions. They are Agility based, so they have increased attack speed and armor, while the Casters are Intelligence based.
Casters have lower hp, lower armor and they rely more on their spells to do damage.

In the future, I want to make the difference a lot bigger. I want to add a Fury/Rage system instead of mana for Melee type heroes and a Focus system for Ranged heroes.
Basically Fury/Rage increases when the hero deals damage, but decreases in time.
Focus is just like rage, just that it regenerates a lot slower and does not decrease in time.
Of course, this is just the basic idea, many changes can come.

You know I could make a melee hero a caster. Attributes and range (melee or range) should not be your distinction between classes.

Classes need to be unique and serve a purpose. Just saying that they're agility heroes so they can attack fast and have high armor doesn't cut it.

I'm sorry, but we simply do not approve of maps that use standard melee heroes without any clever applications given thereof. We demand more originality and far more effort put into maps than simply using melee heroes for your characters. Please look at some of the other maps approved to the database and this will become clear to you as well.

Sorry, but I am moving this to maps and campaign projects for further development.