Eldritch Gaze (T3 Spirit Support/Utility Item)

[KashMoneyKale]

Eldritch Gaze - T3 Spirit Item

+150 bonus health
+2 m/s move speed

Active (80 second cooldown)
Emit a shockwave in all directions that pierces solid objects and terrain. Enemies caught in the wake of the shockwave are afflicted with the Scrying debuff, revealing them through walls and increasing all damage taken by 10% for the duration of the debuff. Nearby allies have increased movement speed while moving toward enemies marked with Scrying.

Additionally, if an enemy hero is killed while under the effects of Scrying, the debuff will be refreshed and applied to the nearest enemy hero within range and vision of the caster (with reduced effectiveness), prioritizing an enemy pinged by the caster if possible. The caster also permanently gains 2 spirit power upon getting a kill or assist on a target marked with Scrying (no stack limit). This item's cooldown is reduced by 5 seconds per enemy killed while under the effects of Scrying (this does not stack or persist between activations).

40 meter radius shockwave, 12 second Scrying debuff duration
15 meter radius ally movespeed buff, 10% increased movespeed
20 meter radius Scrying refresh/transfer range, 6 second Scrying debuff duration


This item is meant to serve as a supportive item (roughly equivalent to Cultist Sacrifice/Trophy Collector) within the Spirit item pool, enabling detection of lurking nearby threats and coordination of attack on key enemies. It also provides a small scaling bonus to the user, allowing them to continue to build other utility items without sacrificing their ability to become a damage threat as the game progresses. Range, duration, and item cooldown stats would increase the above values as expected. Some of these ideas may not be completely unique, but they are all my own concepts! I hope you enjoy reading and appreciate any discussion that follows

 

[nudl9]

Sorry i don't mean to shoot down ideas, but vision and information gathering related items take away a lot of the excitement of having players fight in the dark and doing guess work.

Scrying makes escaping more difficult. It also makes it more difficult to approach an enemy.

While i generally don't think this item would matter in pubs, in an organized team informationg gathering is usually seen as too strong in games like this. To use dota as an example, anytime there are supports with strong vision capabilities they are usually hard nerfed into the ground (Monkey King, Weaver, Rikimaru).

 

[KashMoneyKale]

In general, I agree that it will probably be better in organized play than in solo queue. However, saying an item like this is strictly "too strong" for the game, given the power levels of other items in the game, I don't think it would be over-tuned at all. The biggest flaw I see with an item like this is that multiple people could buy and stack the effectiveness of the item, which likely would be a huge issue in organized play. But then again, they're also equally good at baiting and punishing cooldowns. Moreover, they are probably less likely to get caught in general since they already play the vision game by taking high ground and scouting more consistently.

An 80-second active could be very easily baited out and punished with things like debuff resist and movement ability actives, since this does not inflict any damage on its own and could be made to not put a marked enemy "in-combat" for things that require a player to be out of combat. It's also probably inevitable that vision will come to this game, especially since invisibility always seems to make an appearance. As such, this item could probably just be relegated to sniff out the pesky invisible characters or other character archetypes that really need flank positioning.

I think an easy way to address concerns with this item would be to play around with the range detection and cooldown, but since the Scrying debuff doesn't affect the enemy's movespeed (which was an intentional decision), I don't know how difficult it will be to escape in actuality if the item also has a clear indicator hitbox and maybe a loud activation sound. You could also make it such that it doesn't pass through veils, so there still is an innate counterplay of positioning around its activation if you are expecting it.

Nevertheless, I appreciate the input! I think this item concept would actually be a very cool ultimate ability on a future character themed around hunting down enemies (likely modified to fit the kit, but the point stands). But again, thanks for the feedback and discussion! That's what this is all about anyway