Honestly, this is just a reskin of Merlin from the game Gauntlet, since I envision Khadgar working in basically the same way, which is also very similar to Invoker from Dota. Whenever I see a post asking "which kind of kit would you like to see added" I always imagine Merlin's / Invoker's mechanics, and for characters themselves, I'd love to see Khadgar. I think those two things fit pretty well with each other, so I decided to create this concept page just to the put the idea out there.
All I did here was rename the abilities to fit Khadgar as a WoW mage, and made very slight adaptations to bring their power level a little closer to what you'd expect from a HotS character, such as "Deep Freeze" not stunning, and "Prismatic Barrier" not granting invulnerability. Gauntlet is a very different game from HotS, so while these things aren't game-breaking there, they'd be too OP in HotS. But other than that, I think the kit could work surprisingly well with proper tuning, despite being ripped straight from a different genre altogether. Of course, if Blizzard ever adds a character with this mechanic, their actual abilities would likely be different, but I think it's a solid example.
I also think it'd be perfectly fine for him to not have Heroic Abilities considering he already has 9 Basic Abilities, or maybe he could have passive Heroics (like choosing one of the three magic schools to buff).
The way this whole thing works is, Spells are made of 2 elements. When you conjure the first element, nothing happens. When you then summon a second element, they combine into the respective spell, which gets "equipped" to your Trait button. You do this whenever you want to equip a different Spell, which always goes to your Trait button. The trait as it is listed here will almost never be seen. Think of it as
[Might of the Nerazim]: it keeps getting replaced as Zeratul casts his abilities.
I'd like his conjured elements to be visible to everyone. I imagined them being small orbs, like Kael's
[Verdant Spheres], then looked up Invoker and it turns out he does exactly that.
Some details on the abilities, since I didn't give them numbers:
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Ray of Frost: no/low cooldown, stats start up low but grow significantly over time if it sticks to a target, can turn very slowly while channeling.
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Deep Freeze: massive slow, medium cooldown.
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Frozen Orb: large area, very low damage, long cooldown. The orb itself moves from Khadgar to the targeted location at the same speed as Li-Ming's orb, affecting enemies it hits, then stops and sticks around for a while, affecting the area around it.
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Flameshift: not a teleport, more like a
[Jet Propulsion] with no wind-up or enemy collision. Low impact damage, high DoT, medium/long cooldown.
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Fireball: low damage, very low cooldown, fast cast time, medium/long range.
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Phoenix Flames: high damage, small/medium area, low/medium cooldown, long range. Arcs in the air like Zarya's grenades. Has a minimum cast range (as in, it can't be cast too close to Khadgar).
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Nether Tempest: low/medium damage, cooldown, and range (for the initial target and chaining).
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Arcane Shock: medium damage, medium cooldown, melee range, very small area in front of him.
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Prismatic Barrier: very small, long cooldown, bubble-shaped like
[Holy Word: Salvation].
But as I said these are just ripped from Gauntlet as a way to showcase the mechanic.
Heroes of the Storm Build Guides
But how do the cooldowns work? Do they block your D or are they spell specific? How would it be visible to player?
Cooldown display is interesting to think about in this case! I pretty much just imagined picking Merlin straight from Gauntlet and dropping him in HotS exactly as he is, as I found his design there to work incredibly well, but I see why it could be divisive for HotS: there, each spell has its own cooldown (with no global cd), but there's only one icon which always displays what your current spell is (and whether its available or not), so you pretty much have to keep track on your own. I must say, it actually works pretty well, you get used to them very quickly, especially since 3 of them have basically no cooldown and one is like 1.5 second.
It'd be hard to show all 9 on-screen at all times, but I guess there are some possible compromises. After you conjure one element, the Q W E buttons could transform into the respective spells they'll result in with your next press. So for instance, if your first conjured element is Frost, Q would display Ray of Frost, W would be Deep Freeze, and E would be Frozen Orb; and so on.
Technically you could just display all of them on the 6 extra buttons except for Ray of Frost, Fireball and Nether Tempest, since they're too low for it too matter anyway. It'd look a bit weird but I do think people prefer having the information available even if the presentation isn't the best (look at all the ways people suggest showing Abathur's cooldowns). It would limit design space for his talents a bit though, as it would limit him to 1 active talent at most (his R is still free) and none of the talents could increase those short cooldowns as a tradeoff for something.
Also, if you use a spell would it reset both elements to nothing? If not, how would you reset it if you wanted to get a new spell?
As for reseting, I think it's another thing that worked out very well in Gauntlet.
After conjuring an element, you have something like 1 second to conjure the next one, otherwise they reset to nothing.
Conjuring two in a row consumes them and "equips" their respective spell (in HotS it would be "equipped" to D), which remains there until you conjure another combination for a different spell (with Q W and E). As soon as you successfully combine two, your Trait updates and your conjures reset.
If you press something wrong, like, let's say you wanted Ray of Frost (QQ), but you accidentally started with W; you can either wait for it to reset on its own (which is probably not ideal) or just press any other element, which will "equip" some other spell to D that you didn't want, but then you can just press QQ and switch again to Ray of Frost.
That's how Gauntlet does it, but it could potentially be tweaked in HotS to adjust the skill floor/ceiling.
Global cooldowns could be one way to do it, for instance. Like a global to all Conjures after equipping a spell or something like that, would prevent you from fixing your mistakes that easily.
Also, that makes sense with the resetting. Do the Basic Abilities have cooldowns?
And yes, I agree that having a GC between QWE casts would not be very fun, you could have it right after the casting of a spell, then it would seem more like a reset, or a regathering of his thoughts after casting a spell.
Also, how would talents work for this hero?
Yeah, having a cooldown after casting a spell could be a way of setting a limit to his combo potential with his own kit too, if any in particular prove problematic.
Hm, I didn't really think of any specific talents, but I guess they could still be similar to those of other heroes. Actives could be a bit weird and might be best to avoid, and he would probably have more talents that affect multiple abilities compared to other heroes, but that's probably it. There could be combo-style talents, too.
Maybe I should add these to the page later, but here are some ideas.
Talents that incentivize certain combos:
Antipode
"Hitting 2 enemy Heroes with Flameshift resets the cooldown of Deep Freeze." --> Encourages Flameshifting offensively. The actual incentive could be different, maybe increasing Flameshift's damage to enemies Slowed by Deep Freeze, for instance.
Combustion
"Enemies ignited by Flameshift take X% more damage from Fireball and Phoenix Flames." --> Also encourages Flameshifting offensively, but this one has a Fire theme and involves all Fire spells.
Rain of Fire
"Casting Flameshift increases the damage of your next Phoenix Flames within 3 seconds by X%." -> Another take on the same idea, but in a way that incentivizes using Flameshift to the side or away from enemies rather than through them, so that you're at the right range to immediately throw Phoenix Flames at them. (Immediately because of the shorter window, compared to buffing damage to the long duration of the DoT for the previous talent).
A few could reallocate the power budget of their affected spells, changing the way you use them, like:
Frostfire Orb
"Reduce Frozen Orb's Slow by X% and increase its damage by X%." --> Allows you the option of spending a talent to make Frozen Orb remain more relevant if your team already has something similar like Slowing Sands or Lava Burst, by shifting some of the Slow into damage.
Harsh Winter
"Ray of Frost doesn't need to ramp up anymore, but can only be channeled for X seconds". --> More efficient, but you can't stay as long in the back, which you would likely want to do as you're a squishy mage.
Sleet Storm
"Ray of Frost creates a swirling storm around you instead of a beam." --> This is actually Diablo 3 talent. It's just fun to imagine a build focused on being in close range, but I don't know how viable that would be. This would go well with it though.
Arcane Radiance
"Arcane Shock Blinds enemies for X seconds instead of knocking them back." --> Could also work well with a hypothetical close-range build, as you wouldn't want to knock enemies away from you. This still gives you safety in a different way, but it could potentially increase the damage instead of blinding, or something like that, increasing offense in exchange for safety.
Guardian's Aegis
"Prismatic Barrier grants 100 Spell Armor, but only Khadgar is affected." --> A selfish talent that greatly improves his survivability tool, at the expense of it not being usable by his allies anymore. Could also be the other way around, making it a more powerful team ability (by maybe increasing the area) but preventing Khadgar from benefiting from it himself.
Then there could be the standard stuff like:
Bone Chill
"Keeping Ray of Frost on an enemy for 3 seconds Roots them for 1.5 second. This can only occur once every X seconds."
Nether Currents
"Nether Tempest's damage increases by X% for each Hero it chains through."
Stuff that affects all spells of a given school:
Burning Reach
"Increase the range of your Fire spells by X%." --> That would be all spells that start with Fire, but there could potentially be something that affects every with a Fire element in it. I think I'd avoid that because, in my experience, I ended up memorizing them as "First frost spell, second frost spell, third frost spell. First fire, second fire, [...]", so I don't think much about what exactly the second element is. But who knows, maybe that's just me.
Ice Barrier
"Gain X Armor for each enemy Hero Slowed by your Frost spells."
Stuff that affects different spells without being combo-oriented:
Lingering Magic
"Deep Freeze, Phoenix Flames and Prismatic Barrier leave a pool of energy on their area of affect for X seconds. While standing inside it, allies gain X% Spell Power and enemies lose X% Spell Power."
He could also have something similar to Li-Ming's Tal Rasha's Elements, encouraging him to vary his spells as much as possible.
(His talent names could have terrible puns too, given Khadgar's track record, lol)
Stuff like Arcane Power, Presence of Mind, Time Warp, Combustion, etc. Jaina already has Icy Veins, but all the rest are still available (Kael'thas has a storm talent called Presence of Mind but it has very little to do with the actual spell from WoW, it's just a vague reference to it being commonly cast before Pyroblast in the past). One nice thing about them being castable buffs instead of passives (as I imagined them at first) is that these would fill the R slot, as usual, which is unused right now.
Or maybe you could have an ability for the one, and for the other a passive that is filled if you choose 3 of the same element as spell components. Like a second storing spell, but a more powerful one.