Duriel by JLE1138

I just wanted to be sure, because if I'm going to eviscerate someone's hard work, I don't want to be the bad guy. Also knowing this is an older moveset for you certainly helps take a load off my mind.

I'll note that I'm not too familiar with this character, which means my suggestions will by-and-large ignore flavor and lore if it means making a more functional character, but on with the show:


While the concept of taking damage to fill resources is a perfectly acceptable one, Duriel isn't well built to take advantage of the concept. My overall problem with this moveset is that the core abilities fail to enable the character to perform any particular job, be it close-up scrapping or generalist casting. Even under ideal conditions, his abilities don't provide him with much benefit, be it for utility or for damage, and simply buffing the numbers would not be a substantial enough change to fix his core issues. Primarily what's missing is an element consistent with all Melee Assassins: the ability to close the gap. Every Melee Assassin in the game (excluding Gazlowe, who is really only in the role because he doesn't fit anywhere else) has some baseline way of getting to their opponent, or failing that, a way of sticking to the opponent once they've closed the initial gap, both things Duriel is missing. While there is some room to create an unconventional Melee Assassin who breaks the rules, I don't believe what you've created matches that.

Trait (D): Pain - I like Pain. I do think the numbers and specific functionality could be adjusted, but I'm definitely fond of the idea of taking damage to enable abilities, and there's a certain elegance to the resource also healing you up if you have a lot of it. It's something I'm always fond of, being rewarded for holding onto your abilities and not just going ham. An inconsistent 25 extra health per second is honestly a bit on the low side. I honestly think it wouldn't even be a problem if you made it 1 extra health for every 5, because getting the maximum value requires Duriel to not use his abilities. That said, personally I think this trait has a functionality problem, where it's easy for enemies to just ignore you (or only hit you with trivial <1% damage attacks) once you're low on Blood, essentially making the fight a 4v5, or alternatively, getting stuck in situations where Duriel's Blood and Health are low, making it impossible for him to get more of either.

My suggestion would actually be to make Pain only store 100 Blood, but make it so that Duriel gains 1 Blood per second for every 2% of his health that's missing. If his cooldowns were lower, that could almost make him into an ability version of Zul'jin, able to cast rapidly once your health gets lower. (Also on that note, I think you should balance a resource like this in a manner similar to Sonya, with your ability cadence defined more by your resource than your cooldowns, allowing you to get way more value out of your kit the better you are at keeping your Blood up.)


Q: Leeching Mass - Essentially a Singularity Spike crossed with Living Bomb. Almost all 'close range' characters do have at least one ranged ability, and plenty of these take the form of a simple poking tool, but that said, HotS only has three basic ability slots, and when working with a mechanic as distinct as pain, you want as many abilities to fit the mould as possible. I think that there are many directions you could take this ability that fit the design better, but the first and foremost change I'd make is to remove the delay on the explosion. A simple skillshot that explodes on hit is a niche that's still relatively rare in HotS. Removing that aspect from the kit removes a lot of complexity, enabling the addition of different, more useful complexity.

While I don't have a distinct idea, I'd like to suggest a few that might work

• Add a slow, and make this Duriel's primary way of closing gaps (I'd put the slow elsewhere, myself).
• Make the ability free to cast, and focus it entirely into being an alternative way to gain Blood. This one fits well with the current design of Pain, helping to overcome the no-win situations Duriel has the potential to fall into.
• Halve the move's power, but lower the cooldown to 2-3 seconds. This lets the move be a potential pay-off for saving up lots of Blood. It'd probably need to be relatively short-ranged, to make sure Duriel doesn't just become a Mage, but rapid-fire, short-range splash damage gives him a higher skill ceiling, as an ability with the potential for rapidly landing low-damage abilities that hit the entire enemy team opens up the door for interesting new talents.

W: Taint - This move, I think, has the most potential to bring the character together. The core problem is that if you successfully land on someone, Taint them, and start hitting them, the maggots that spawn don't actually provide any benefits. If Duriel is following his enemy, and the maggots are following Duriel, and the creep is following the maggots, then even if they're tightly packed together, the damage from the creep will, at best, only add trivial extra damage to a foe. In theory it could work better as an area-denial effect, but if Duriel needs to be chasing an enemy to activate that effect, then you're limited in what areas you're able to deny.

Personally, I would just scrap the Maggots altogether, at least in terms of them being what creates the creep. I think they're an unnecessary middle-man that don't add much to the design. Instead, I would make the rules text as follows:

In this sense it becomes a bit like a Butcher Brand, but the focus is on slowing a target and anyone who comes near them. If Duriel had no other slows, then this ability would give him the Melee Assassin archetype of "bad at closing the gap, but great at keeping it closed".


E: Plasma Pool - I've thought about this a lot, but an untalented Plasma Pool has no reason to use Vector targeting or have such a huge delay, and I'm dubious on why it needs to be a pool at all. Theoretically it forces Duriel to fight in a specific location, and opens up counterplay where his enemies can knock him out of the pool, but if he's already lost 25 armour, then the counterplay option is simple: Kill him.

As it stands though, the only reason to use this ability in combat is for the sake of generating extra blood from incoming damage, otherwise you're better off going behind the gate or something. As it is, the move is effectively just an out of combat heal, and while a character whose primary gimmick is based around taking damage should definitely have some kind of ability like this, I think this one overcomplicates things. I'm a bit strapped for definitive suggestions here, but if you're going to keep the current design, it needs to have a combat-ready side effect. In fact, one thing I'd maybe suggest is having a dedicated talent tier (level 1 or maybe 4) entirely based around augmenting this ability.

Alternatively, removing the pool entirely and just making it so that Duriel gains 5% of his health per second while having reduced armor for up to 8 seconds (with the ability to cancel early) would be an acceptable approach. Maybe even couple that with a buff to his basic attack damage or movement speed while active. Alternatively, I really do like the concept of the talent 'Frozen Carapace', and while the numbers are too low (at most it can heal 210 health, and that requires ideal conditions), I think it plays nicely with Duriel's resource management, and so perhaps that talent could be made baseline as an activatable component of Duriel's trait.

But overall when it comes to Plasma Pool, I'm stumped. Perhaps a toggle ability that drains Blood while active in order to buff and/or heal could be the final tool in his arsenal that rounds out his resource management? Overall I think this move is on the right path, but as-is it ties into Duriel's overall lack of ability to perform.


I was originally going to touch on heroics and a few talents, but I think I'll cut it short here since this critique ballooned out of control. I hope my comments here have been useful.

How about simply Pain as the Trait's name? There will be no confusion by doing so :P.

I'm very intrigued by that concept of yours, but I cannot lie to you that I haven't had the time yet to read the talents section.