A Melee Assassin who is reliant on her weapon to cast abilities, but is very powerful if she can maintain her position.
Attack Type: Melee
Attack Speed: 1.20
Attack Range: 1.66
Attack Damage: 110
Health: 1880
Health Regen: 3.49
Resource: Shadow Scythe
Vorazun is the Matriarch of the Nerazim, and like Zeratul, she is renowned for her skills in stealth and assassination. However, in the Nexus she casts off cloaks and veils in the name of fighting with the honour befitting of her title.
This design was a bottom-up attempt at creating something that stemmed entirely from one specific concept for a trait, namely that this character's abilities did not have a cooldown, but rather all three shared a resource that she was required to re-collect before being able to cast another ability. Once this was in place, the moveset very quickly came together simply based on what would be needed for such a moveset to A) Overcome its inherent weaknesses and B) Have abilities that all serve a distinct purpose, given they share a 'cooldown'.
As such, Vorazun was chosen simply for best fitting the already established moveset. Other characters were also considered for the role, such as Al'akir, Aranna, and Naisha, but ultimately Vorazun's weapon was a perfect fit for the given abilities, and her nature as a protoss provided ample justification for the pre-set heroics. That said, having a concrete character in mind greatly helped with the creation of talents, as many talents from level 7 and onwards were added only after her character was decided on.
Vorazun and her Shadow Scythe.
Vorazun features a very unique core mechanic, even among the cast of Heroes of the Storm, and learning to play her requires superb decision making, knowing when to commit, and having the bravery to make risky plays in the late game.
Pros:
- Highly versatile damage dealer
- Amazing escape
- Semi-global presence
- Flashy lategame
Cons:
- Positioning dependent
- Vulnerable to Crowd Control
- Can "silence" herself
- Slow early game
All comments are welcome, as are suggestions for new names for abilities and talents.
Heroes of the Storm Build Guides
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Several questions though:
- Her trait, I think having to wait 0.5 seconds to re-equip her weapon especially when you have to walk over it is a bit clunky unless it's a mobile channel? I suggest more clarification
- In Recall Weapon, does the weapon physically travel towards you when you recall it? Also, I'm assuming the "Summon Weapon is put on CD" part means this active component of her trait is put on CD whenever she uses a basic ability?
- Vaulting Leap, does the slow occur at the final destination or the starting position? I think you need to clarify the wording a bit. Also just a minor thing, wouldn't a teleport be more in character for her rather than a leap/dash? Unless the leap is unstoppable.
- Just a tiny thing but perhaps a talent or component that increases her Move Speed when unequipped would be great and compliments her identity very well
- Relentless Dawn seems very broken, maybe significantly reduce its minimal distance instead of outright removing it?
- You only have to channel the move on activation. Walking over it skips the channel. I think this was originally conveyed better when the channel was .75 seconds long, but when they're both .5, it's easier to assume they're the same action. I'll clarify it. Though I've also been thinking about returning the channel to .75 seconds.
- Yes, when you use an ability, your trait will go on cooldown. Activating Recall Weapon will cause Vorazun to warp it back to herself. No Jedi tricks here.
- Vaulting leap only damages at the starting area, it has no landing hit, but I'll try to make that more clear. Additionally, it not being a warp is mostly so the move can logically tie into her scythe-loss mechanic. Vaulting has a certain elegance to it that I think could be made to match her character through clean animation. Thanks to Shadow Dash, she still does have a warp-based ability, so no worries there.
- She has one: Chrono Boost. Though it's also tied to dealing damage.
- Relentless Dawn removing the minimum range was something based on the original design I gave the talent, but has since stuck around because "why not", since I figured most enemies would be able to escape its range, since Vaulting Leap has a travel time. That said, I think it could be quite broken for PvE. I'll consider removing it in my next update.
-What occurs with her basic attack when she loses her weapon? Based on the wording of her passive I can assume she can still basic attack without it, correct?
-At level 1, Siphoning Strike seems a bit strong. While not so in the early game, her basic attack is already increased by 25% with Shadow Scythe equipped, so if she were to hit a hero late game, gaining 40% of the damage as health returned to her with her attack speed being higher than 1.0 means she's in for a heck of a self-sustainable time. Now throw Vulnerability onto the target so she does more damage to them or have her be Stim Drone'd or Bloodlusted and she's hitting very fast healing up very rapidly against heroes.
-So as to not make her seem as tanky for a melee assassin, on the level 7 talent Shield of the Matriarch I would clarify the shield in one of two ways. One, I would put a time limit on the shield or two I would not have the shield stack at all (or at least stack very little). In the first way, if there is a time limit it doesn't reward the quick-fire Shadow Strikes with a large shield that lasts for a hell of a long time (toppled on with Siphoning Strike adds a ton of self-sustain making them lean more Bruiser-like). In the second way, it can be kept indefinitely but it can't be built up from firing off tons of short-ranged Shadow Strikes.
-Lastly I would use Uther's talent Redemption, and the basis for the cooldown of the level 20 talent Bound to the Blade (which is 180 seconds), and I would suggest having the Psionic Spirit respawn a few seconds after collecting the blade, so as to give the person time to collect the blade and move out of potential danger (depending on where their blade was) so that their revival via Bound to the Blade doesn't feel wasted.
I apologize if this seemed liked a lot! Your concept is very awesome, the abilities and a lot of the talents I feel like are right on the money for this. My notes on your concept was only my opinion, so please feel free to disregard them if you disagree with anything that I have said, it would not hurt my feelings in the slightest!
To address your notes in order:
-The way I picture her unarmed attacks is as a series of open-palmed strikes, as if she's thrusting her psionic energies forward. Nothing super flashy, just something that can add a dash of elegance.
-Siphoning Strikes is a difficult tool to balance, since she might struggle to actually land hits with her basic attacks without using an ability first. Generally I took to the thought that if you want to endlessly sustain with it, you need to effectively silence yourself. I'll continue to think about this one and maybe look more explicitly into the math. I might make it a flat rate per basic attack, but feel free to suggest your own ideas.
-Shield of the Matriarch was not meant to stack, my bad. I'll add a line to clarify. It was one of the moves directly inspired by Zeratul, and so was meant to give her a similarly sized shield to the one he gains from stealthing.
-I went back and forth on whether to balance this around Redemption or Unconquered Spirit. There are enough inconveniences involved with actually getting the revival that I'm not entirely sure. Though honestly I was also thinking of just removing the talent outright since the non-heroic Storm Talents were kind of rushed just so I could publish the post a bit quicker (why I was in such a rush I don't remember).
As some last notes, there were some things I didn't mention, such as thinking she'd probably need some design tweaks to help her stand out from Zeratul visually, and thinking she'd be a character whose character ring has an icon to signify if the Shadow Scythe is equipped or not, just in case it's not clear from her model. Overall I'm super glad to have received this comment and would be happy to hear any more criticisms or suggestions you have. This is the kind of character that breaks enough new ground to where fully balancing her is impossible without in-the-field testing, but I'd like her to be as fun and as fair as I can get her.
As one last note, let me know what build(s) you think you'd go for with her.
Hearing your thoughts about Siphoning Strikes make it more understanding for me to wrap my mind around now. It would be a trade off, sacrificing her ability power for self-sustain. I feel like the potential strength is a bit powerful, but I don't think it necessarily needs a massive nerf keeping what you said in mind. I have two suggestions in mind, but of course these are only suggestions. Suggestion 1) I would nerf the numbers on it to 15% and 30% respectively, where it is still strong but won't feel as overpowered if you throw in Stim Drone or Bloodlust. Suggestion 2) Keep the 40% and have Siphoning Strike only affect heroes, that way in team fights the player has to choose between using her abilities or auto-attacking to self-sustain. In this way, the Vorazun player can't hop on a mercenary camp or into the lane to heal back up relatively quickly before going back into a team fight.
As far as builds, I can see 2 fun ones in my mind's eye: A threatening bruiser-like build and a terrifying assassin-like build.
Bruiser-Like Build: Vitality Spiral, Thunder Vault, Psychic Reflexes (if enemy team has lots of basic attackers) or Shield of the Matriarch, Shadow Dash, Psionic Twister or Narrow Escape (if the enemy team has lots of mages), Relentless Dawn, Shadow Fury
Assassin-Like Build: Right of the Nerazim, Chrono Boost, Cleaving Catch, Phase Blade, Debilitating Aim, Umbral Execution, Multiphase or Bound to the Blade
Right now I'm currently thinking I might go with Option 2. Originally I wanted the move to enable some out-of-battle healing, but I think letting Vitality Spiral be the dedicated 'safe' healing option while Siphoning Strikes becomes more of a duelist's heal might be more interesting. Gotta make sure those talents all have their own niches, after all.
And those are some interesting builds, that first one resembles something I'd been considering when thinking how I'd counter certain characters, while the other vaguely reminds me of a Zeratul-like playstyle. Personally Vorazun doesn't match my playstyle, so I'm hard pressed to pick a build myself. That said, I would always want to go for the big-time Shadow Fury plays where I warp to each enemy hero in turn.