Back in the good 'ol days of me playing WoW, one of my mains for quite some time was a Shadow Priest. I wanted to capture the awesomeness and satisfaction of Mind Flaying targets while also bringing the 'heal through damage' mechanic that has so far been missing from HotS. When I saw that there was, in fact, not too many named Shadow Priest in Warcraft lore, I decided to take Sen'jin and mix in some juju awesomeness as well. Here, I try to incorporate both classic Shadow Priest abilities while being faithful to the fact that Sen'jin was also a Witch Doctor.
I don't envision Shadowform healing to be enough to make Sen'jin a 'real' healer. He's a support in the same way that Tassadar is a support. Specifically, the support functions include small AOE healing, team sustain, channeled slow, and powerful team-supporting effects for both Heroics.
Stray thoughts:
- For Sen'jin's trait, I was torn between the iconic name of Shadowform and the uniqueness of Vampiric Embrace's healing through damage feature. I ended up incorporating the latter's effect into the former, and naming a talent that improved the trait Vampiric Embrace as a compromise
- I tried to preserve the effect/spirit of the Fear mechanic in WoW without introducing a new game mechanic to HotS, which is why I described Psychic Scream and its Level 20 upgrade in the manner I did
- In the spirit of talents involving trade-offs that have been met positively by players (think Sylvanas' Cold Embrace), I sought to make more talents that involve such trade-offs. I'm particularly proud of the Red Brew/Green Brew talents, although I'm not sure if x% range is as important as x% radius, so those numbers may be tweaked.
- Mind Quickening means the spells deal their full damage in 33% less time, though associated effects (i.e. Mind Flay slow) also last less. Their cooldowns are not affected however.
- Vampiric Touch's mana regen, I believe, compares favourably to the only other mana regen ability currently in game: Malfurion's Innervate. The latter restores 100 mana on a 30 sec CD, translating to 3.33 mana/second. A full Vampiric Touch restores 25 mana on a 10 sec CD, translating to 2.5 mana/second
per Hero. In the case where Sen'jin lanes with another Hero, however, total mana returned would be 5 mana/second, with even more once teams start grouping. The downside of VT is that if an enemy with VT dies before all ticks go off, the full mana return is missed. In addition, Innervate can be targeted to return a large chunk of mana to one hero who is particularly low or a heavy mana user, whereas VT cannot.
- Please comment/vote! <3
Heroes of the Storm Build Guides
@LainEdel: While I understand your concern, it seems to me that hitting the sweet spot between non-viable and OP that you raise is simply a matter of tweaking damage numbers (which I have purposely left out here in the design). Note that channeled abilities like Mind Flay have some crucial drawbacks: (1) they deal their damage over time instead of right away like most Basic Abilities; (2) they render the hero effectively immobilized for the duration of the cast; and (3) they are vulnerable to interrupts. A full Mind Flay build on Sen'jin with the talents you pointed out might tip the balance in his favour for 1v1s, but probably not against heroes with interrupts, and would also entail giving up many of his team-centric talents. I will concede that Voodoo Doll--meant to make the decision to continue channeling while taking hits more attractive--may need to be tweaked to reflect only 10% or 15% of damage sustained while channeling.
@Kaiser24: I respectfully disagree that Psychic Scream is OP as is. One reason why DS is (was?) considered so strong is because it can stack with other AoE ultimates for some wombo-combo silliness. Because the stun effect of Psychic Scream is designed to immediately end if the target takes damage, Psychic Scream can't be stacked with AoE in the way DS can, and in fact the knockback component of the ability actually makes subsequent AoE more difficult. Instead, Psychic Scream is designed to serve either as an emergency escape (a la Brightwing's Emerald Wind) or as a way to isolate a target or targets from an enemy team (a la Maw, Void Prison, some Emerald Winds, sort of like Web Wrap, etc.) that requires a higher degree of team coordination to pull off (don't break early with errant AoE!) but may be more rewarding in its effectiveness. Also note that both DS and PS require the caster to be right in the thick of things for optimal effect, and Uther arguably has access to more survivability talents that make such a feat much more likely. In fact, the difficulty of Sen'jin to get into the middle of the enemy team to cast PS is the primary reason why I actually had the opposite concern than you: I expect Death Rattle Juju to be the more popular ultimate, and am worried that PS may be significantly less likely to be picked.
Would like to see Vol'Jin anyway though. You have my vote.