Kerrigan by Demolij

[Level 1]
-Sharpened Blades: Impaling Blades ring deals 15% increased damage and restores 15 mana for each hero it hits.
-Clean Kill: If Ravage kills the target it refunds 30 Mana and the next Ravage gains 25% bonus damage.
-Eviscerate: Ravage deals 45% increased damage to heroes at close range.


[Level 4]
-Siphoning Impact: If Ravage kills the target it restores health equal to 10% of Kerrigan's max life.
-Assimilation Mastery: Assimilation Shield degen rate reduced to 10% per second. Health regen increased by 100% while an Assimilation Shield is active.
-Frenzy: Basic attacks during Psionic Blast grant a stacking .3 increased range up to 1.5 range.


[Level 7]
-Fury of the Swarm: Casting an ability causes you to burn nearby enemies for 36 (+4% per lvl) damage per second for 3 seconds.
-Blade Torrent: Impaling Blades ring size increased by 30%. Quest: Stun 15 enemies with Impaling Blades. Reward: Arc increased by 100%.
-Psionic Pulse: Psionic Blast basic attacks deal 60% damage in an AoE around the target.


[Level 10]
-Maelstrom: Heroic Ability. Rapidly deal damage to all nearby enemies.
-Ultralisk: Heroic Ability. Summon an Ultralisk to attack enemies.


[Level 13]
-Leaping Strike: Ravage range increased by 40%.
-Primal Grasp: Impaling Blades pull slows enemies in the range by 30% the instant it's cast for 1 second, and slows for 3 seconds if the ring stuns them.
-Subterranean Spikes: Impaling Blades initial ring placement is invisible to enemies, and reduce the cooldown by 2 seconds.


[Level 16]
-Aggressive Defense: Assimilation Shields take 30% reduced damage
-Essence for Essence: Activate to deal 10% of target enemy Hero's Max Health and gain Assimilation Shields for twice that amount. 60s cooldown.
-Queen's Rush: Activate to gain 25% increased damage for 3 seconds. 50s cooldown, applied for free on takedowns.


[Level 20]
-Omegastorm: Maelstrom size increased by 25%. Assimilation Shields gained by Maelstrom increased by 100%.
-Torrasque: Ultralisk morphs into an egg when it dies lasting 10 seconds. If Kerrigan walks over the egg before it dies Ultralisk's cooldown is reduced by 80 seconds.
-Energy Efficiency: Psionic Blast cooldown is reduced by 8 seconds.
-Psionic Shift: Activate to teleport to a nearby location, dealing 50 (+4% per lvl) damage to nearby enemies. Generates 300% increased Assimilation Shields from the damage dealt. 70s cooldown.

The biggest thing I wanted to keep was her identity of a hard engaging combo assassin. The Impaling Blades into Primal Grasp combo is critical to her playstyle, and removing that is a huge loss for her and the game. Instead I needed to focus on what her kit really needed to be better. Currently she is a very all-or-nothing hero. Q either resets if the target dies or is wasted. W/E combo either lands for huge value or she sits around uselessly for 12 seconds. She either gets great value or no value. This is what I want to improve.

First of all, her Trait granted a pretty small benefit and encouraged players to try and just build up a shield outside of the fight. Increasing the shield generation while decreasing the max shields by 25% made it provide strong shields when she lands her abilities, but not make them be incredibly massive if enemies can't burst down the shields right away. The actual numbers mean she gains 10% more shields from heroes, but if she picks up Aggressive Defense it's only a 5% increase from before, meaning it's not gonna scale way out of control. It is also much more useful early on, and conserving the shield is more relevant to the Kerrigan player.

Then I need a way to integrate her psionic prowess into her kit, which means I need another ability space. The W/E combo is cool, but if you think about it, you are literally never going to use one without the other, and on their own Impaling Blades is a weaker Tyrande Lunar Flare, and Primal Grasp is pretty inferior to Garrosh's Groundbreaker. All I did was combine them, so the new version places the Impaling Blades ring at the location where it can sit for a while letting you reposition, and upon reactivation you can pull enemies into it with the same timing as before. The ring can let you pull enemies who might try and juke it, or let you perform some cool reverse-combos by Q'ing around the target. It also reduces the mana cost significantly, and is far simpler and easy to understand for newer players, while still taking skill to use well. Best of all, there is a new ability space.

Now, what does her kit lack. It is useless once her abilities are used, it has to go all-in to be of any use, and the only way you can do anything is if you use all your abilities right away. So, I added a new ability: Psionic Blast. This was inspired by her energy blasts from SC2 and in the Heroes opening cinematic, and pushes forwards her psionic powers much better than before. It temporarily turns her into a ranged hero that fires energy pulses at people which release large pulses hitting all enemies in an AoE in the same fashion as her old Fury of the Swarm talent. Ranged attacks give her some damage output without having to dive in, but if you do decide to dive in the AoE attacks will let you deal solid dps to all enemies you've combo'd, adding some more options to her kit. She also looks BA while doing it.

I also did a pass at her heroics, particularly her Summon Ultralisk Heroic. Partially by cutting the word "Summon" which sounds dumb. The ability is meant to be used as a way to distract enemies from hitting Kerrigan herself while she wreaks havoc, but right now it's used to chase down squishy heroes and maybe kill them. When it comes to heroic Summons we already have Banshees and Water Elemental for that, so I changed the Ultralisk to, first off, stun the target on summoning to give it an initial use, and then greatly reduce the movement speed so it can't chase down targets but amplifying its health and damage to make it more of a threat when it does hit you. A slow but powerful summon is different from other stationary summons like the Laser Phoenix or Gargantuan. The AoE damage is higher too, but this all comes at a slightly increased cooldown to prevent it from being used as a pushing tool. I also gave Maelstrom a movement speed boost because I removed her movement speed talent at 16 which means she needs a way to move around the battlefield, and Maelstrom could use a bit of spice (she needs to stick to enemies with it anyways so this will help with that).

Finally, I took a pass at her talents. Currently her only viable build is focused around using her Q to clear waves while the rest of her kit just does whatever in teamfights. I didn't want to remove that feature, but I wanted to open up other build paths, which is why I gave her much more mana restoration choices and combined some talents together. Level 1 gives multiple damage options for minion killing, single target hero damage, or AoE damage. I moved the lifesteal to level 4 since you don't need healing that early on as Kerrigan, so now you have the choice of healing, safer damage dealing, or strong in-combat regen. Level 7 provides general improvement to AoE, whether it be damage reliability or consistency. Level 13 is interesting, granting more Q range or improving the versatility of the E in different ways. Level 16 is similar to how it was before, granting % health damage, more sustain, and an active that lets you steamroll off the first kill. Level 20 is very similar to how it was before, but Psionic Efficiency lets you be a ranged attacker indefinitely, and Torrasque isn't gonna push a lane endlessly.

I love Kerrigan! I want her to be a cool, unique, and special hero, but everyone agrees that her kit is too focused around her spikes and too little around her awesome powers. Although I usually don't do reworks, this is something I've wanted to do for a long time, and I'm glad it could be posted here! If you want to see more of my designs (and new hero concepts) click this link here.

EDIT 1: Changed numbers to match current patch, buffed some talents to compensate, buffed Maelstrom and reworked talents on 4 7 and 13.
EDIT 2: Reworked Psionic Blast and its talents to not overlap with Fenix. Assimilation Shield changes.