Spirit Walker (Warcraft III)

Mystical Tauren caster with Ethereal Form, which allows him to avoid physical damage. Believed to be the ill omen of a coming age, white Tauren are held in near reverence by their people, often becoming reclusive priests who wander the land in search of kindred spirits. Attacks land and air units.

Information
The Spirit Walker is a powerful Orcish support unit. They initially come with Spirit Link, which allows the affected units to share the incoming damage between them. While it means these units will take damage together, it allows units to hold longer against attacks that would be normally fatal to them and greatly diminishes enemy focus fire, making key targets like the Blademaster and other spellcasters harder to pick off. This ability has very good synergy with the Shadow Hunter's Healing Wave and the Witch Doctor's Healing Ward, which are great at healing multiple units but are lackluster at healing single targets. A strategy some players use is to bring Peons along with their army for the sole purpose of soaking up Spirit Link damage and increasing the army's staying power.

They are also capable of area-wide dispelling once they have Adept training, allowing them to quickly dispel buffs/debuffs and enemy summoned units whereas Shamans can only Purge one unit at a time.

Once Master training is unlocked, the Spirit Walker can revive fallen Tauren with all of their health using Ancestral Spirit. Any Orc player running Tauren should run several Spirit Walkers. Spirit Walkers can also revive each other, although freshly-revived Spirit Walkers will not have enough mana to cast Ancestral Spirit.

In addition to these spells, Spirit Walkers can change to and from their corporeal and ethereal forms. In their corporeal form, they can attack enemy units but can be physically harmed. In their ethereal forms, the Spirit Walker cannot be physically damaged, and thus can only be damaged via magic damage and spells, though as a result of this, they take more damage from such sources. Since many players tend to use aerial units, it's recommended to keep the walkers in ethereal form to prevent them from being quickly targeted and killed. Spirit Walkers always arrive in ethereal form. However, the Spirit Walker has high damage and health for a spellcaster, making them serviceable ranged attackers in corporeal form. While Wind Riders and Berserkers make better dedicated ranged units, Spirit Walkers offer role compression by combining utility and damage output. They are also the Orcs' only real source of Magic attacks as Shamans and Witch Doctors are comparatively weak in combat.

Counters
Using magic units like Gryphon Riders, Chimaeras and Frost Wyrms can easily dispose of the Spirit Walkers in their ethereal form. Spells may also be used but those are more effective against enemy Heroes.

Spiit Link

 * Links 4 units together in a chain.
 * All units with Spirit Link on them will live longer, by distributing 50% of the damage they take across other Spirit Linked units.

Use this to even out the damage among troops.

Damage sustained over Spirit link is never fatal. Fatal damage sustained via Spirit Link reduces a unit to 1 hit point, and dispels Spirit Link.

Kill the Spirit Walkers.
 * Spirit Link Counters

Use dispel spells.

isenchant

 * Removes all buffs from units in a target area.
 * Deals 250 damage to hostile summoned units.

This ability removes both positive and negative buffs from units.

Anestral Spirit

 * Raises a fallen non-Hero Tauren from the dead.
 * The Tauren is revived with 100% of its hit points restored.

This is an incredibly powerful ability which allows you to return dead Tauren to life! If you use Tauren, this is a must have ability.

Kill the Spirit Walker or remove their mana.
 * Ancestral Spirit Counters

Remove the corpses using a corpse destroying ability.

Ethereal orm

 * Turns the Spirit Walker ethereal, making him immune to physical damage, but unable to attack.
 * Ethereal units can only be harmed by Magic attacks and spells.

Use this ability if you want to make it more difficult for the enemy to kill the Spirit Walker. The enemy can't hurt them unless they have units with magic attacks or with magic spells. Sometimes the enemy doesn't have these types of attacks so your Spirit Walkers will be invincible. The Spirit Walker can't attack while in this form.

Spirit Walkers start in Ethereal form. When Spirit Walkers leave Ethereal Mode, they cannot become Ethereal again for 30 seconds.

Spirit Walkers in Ethereal Form take 66% bonus damage from magic and spell damage.

Use units with magic attacks or use a spell to kill the Spirit Walker.
 * Ethereal Form Counters

Upgrades

 * Spiit Walker Adept Training
 * Increases Spirit Walker's mana capacity, mana regeneration rate, hit points, and gives them the ability to cast Disenchant.


 * BTNSpiritWalkerMasterTraining.png
 * Spiit Walker Master Training
 * Further increases Spirit Walker's mana capacity, mana regeneration rate, hit points, and gives them the ability to cast Ancestral Spirit.


 * {| class="darktable" style="text-align:center"

! Research Cost !! Researched At !! Requirements !! Upgrade Time
 * - class="alt"
 * 100 150  || Spirit Lodge || Spirit Walker Adept Training, Fortress || 75 sec.
 * }

Quotes

 * See Warcraft III Spirit Walker quotes

Patch changes