Blasphemy/mageblood, durable aura-based hero.

[evildoctor130]

I drafted an idea for a hero starting with an ultimate ability I thought would be cool. I tried to keep the abilities somewhat open for multiple playstyles. Ability upgrades may be overtuned.


Stats/scaling - Spirit scaling on regen, duration, or ability range? Regen scaling on max health?
Weapon - Close range, slow

1. Active - Deal low unit-target spirit damage in melee range, slowing. When used on a trooper or neutral creep, instantly kill it and provide regen based on target's remaining health. (Lane/farming tool. Considering making it a melee steroid but the ability to be parried might make it too weak.)
   • Short-ish cooldown. Slightly longer than M&K Scorn so regen doesn't overlap
   • T1 - Increased damage
   • T2 - Increased regen per creep health
   • T3 - Lowered cooldown on hero hit
2. Active - Increase movement speed, becoming CC immune and increasing resistances for a period. Lengthy cooldown.
   • Cooldown is long to force a decision - walk in and ignore kiting CC or use as an escape later in the fight?
   • T1 - Increased resistance gain.
   • T2 - Increased duration.
   • T3 - Removes all active debuffs.
3. Aura - Toggle to sacrifice a portion of maximum health per second to provide healing to allies and spirit damage to enemies based on life lost. (Originally wanted one or the other but it would have skewed the playstyles too heavily towards one side. Maybe the maxhp% cost makes up for it but please provide feedback on this aspect. This ability might be too OP since it damages and heals at the same time.)
   • T1 - Increased HP
   • T2 - Increased regen
   • T3 - Increased max HP% health sacrifice
4. Ultimate - Channel to convert leftmost 3 unit-target items to auras around the caster for a brief period.
   • Long cooldown, once-per-teamfight. Needs to be longer than any active item's cooldown.
   • T1 - Increased AoE
   • T2 - Reduced cooldown
5. T3 - Increased duration (Base duration is too short to apply multiple Knockdowns, ~4.5 seconds)
   • (Suggestions for ability upgrades for ultimate would be appreciated)

Being an aura, items only grant bonuses while in its radius. For example, an enemy can avoid an aura's Knockdown if they leave the area before it finishes. Allies affected by Divine Barrier only have the barrier when inside. Allies do not get a new barrier when moving in an out of the aura.

Some possible playstyles:

Team Support aura



Spirit damage aura

Disabler/initiate aura

Strengths

• Durable
• Transfers their buffs/stats to allies
• Blow through CC
• If successful, tremendous value for allies
• Versatile building

Weaknesses

• Vulnerable to team-wide AoE (Lash, Seven, Haze, Dynamo)
• Poor weapon at long-range, prone to getting kited to death
• Useless if silenced before teamfight, can be interrupted during channel
• Needs teammates to get the most value
• Can be expensive to get online, and middling in farm speed

Synergies

• Hunter's Aura
• Diviner's Kevlar
• Juggernaut
• Healing Tempo
• Lightning Scroll

Design considerations

• Should the ultimate put items on cooldown?
• Should the player be able to choose which items to activate?

Is this character too overpowered? What are some changes you would make? I tried to make weaknesses that are fundamental to the character but there might be a bit of power creep here.

Art-wise, some character ideas that could fit the game's theme are:

• Animated art-deco bronze statue
• Bigger candle trooper
• Wicker man?