"I am the rage in your heart. I am the fury of your thoughts. I alone empowered you to bring chaos to this world, and by the endless void, you shall!"
My idea for Mannoroth is durable melee warrior who thrives on extended combat, with his basic kit heavily inspired by the Pit Lord from Warcraft 3. I have avoided using exact values where I can, but as a general matter I envision him having a very high base health and a fairly strong but slow melee attack. He is an offensive tank who is most effective in the middle of a team fight, designed to make anyone caught near him very nervous. Though I imagine him as being a viable tank for most team compositions, he will really shine as hard counter to other melee heroes. I've designed him with two notable weaknesses: First, he has low mobility, so he will struggle to engage or escape quickly.
Cleave is designed to only give him a small gap closer. At almost every tier, I've given him a talent to help compensate for this (
Onslaught,
Trample,
Crippling Inferno, and
Nether Gateway), but these come at the cost of other powerful options. Second, he will only really shine once nearby enemies are Cursed, so he needs a little time to warm up in a fight. On its own, his kit still offers him some useful tools, but he will need to be regularly taking damage to maintain his maximum potential. Alone, Mannoroth may only be a serious threat to melee assassins. In a team fight however, especially in the late game, he will be able to dish out significant damage, soak a lot of punishment, and seriously cripple the enemy team. Let me know what you think!
Heroes of the Storm Build Guides
1. Enslave is supposed to be very strong, and potentially devastating. I had Mind Control and Cocoon in mind when I designed it. Like any heroic, it will be great against some compositions and less effective against others. Against many compositions, it won't be a great choice because none of your targets will be good counters to the rest of their team; all you'd get is a little extra damage and a few seconds to ignore that target. For Cho'Gall in particular, I imagine it could be done to only take over Cho, and Gall would stay in control to cast spells. I'm thinking of shortening the duration or increasing the cooldown, though, since it has the potential to be extremely powerful.
2. One of my goals in designing Mannoroth was to allow him to fill the role of a tank without needing all of the archetypical tank tools (powerful engage/disengage, stuns, etc.). I learned he would need some gap-closer, but I didn't want to make it too strong because low mobility is a deliberate weakness of his. In exchange, he has multiple debilitating tools to protect his teammates and strong damage to make him a target in fights. That being said, I made sure to include multiple talents that address this, so he isn't doomed to a fate of always being out of position. Maybe it's not practicable to make a real tank without all of those tools, but I think it's worth trying if we want to have a more diverse pool of tanks to pick from.
3. I'm still thinking on numbers, since I don't want to commit to anything wildly out of proportion. But you make a good point. I'll try to include ability comparisons in my next update to at least partially illustrate his damage output.
4. I think your measurements are off. After looking at them both in try mode, it takes approximately 5 blinks from Bolt of the Storm to reach the same distance as The Hunt. If anything, I think 50% more range than Bolt is quite conservative along with the 1 second cast time. The goal is to give Mannoroth a powerful and sudden engage in the late game that will let him enter combat from beyond your line of sight, effectively solving his lack of mobility and enabling him to participate in ambushes.
I hope this explains some things and I'll keep your comments in mind for my next update!