[HOTS] [Hero] Rigas.Earthshaker (Swarm Host)

[FruitNinja]

 

Changelog:

11/22/13

- Began creation

11/24/13

- Began rework

 

 

Name: Rigas.Earthshaker

Portrait: Swarm Host

Unit Base: Swarm Host

Role: Support, Bruiser

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Script: Long ago, there was a network of caverns deep below the Sactum, home to a race of intelligent cavern-dwelling creatures often called the Dwarves (not to be confused with the dwarves of human legend). They were an industrious people, bending the world around them to their will and establishing great forges where their most skilled individuals sought a deeper understanding of the universe. To this end, they continually excavated deeper and deeper into their world, stumbling upon new cavern layers, great riches, and ancient ruins. However, they also awoke a great being known as the Earthshaker, a being that most dwarves at the time was pure legend. The Earthshaker controlled nearly all of the life in the deeper caverns, being linked to it psionically.

 

The Earthshaker did with the dwarves as they did with previous civilizations--assimilation. However, the Earthsaker also gained access to the vast library of dwarven knowledge about the world. Knowing that it did not possess the energy needed to extend itself that far, it instead created a proxy body for itself, one with which it would explore the surface world with and and through which it would assimilate all it could reach.

 

Starting Stats:

Base Health – 275

Movement Speed – 2.65

Attack Range – 4

Attack Speed – 2.1

Base Damage – 25

Attack Name | Animation - Spine Attack | Spine crawler tentacles come out of the ground near Rigas and attack the target

Base Armor – 3

Strength – 38 (+6)

Agility – 23 (+4)

Intelligence – 29 (+5)

 

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Earthshaker

"After 8 seconds, Rigas' next attack causes a tentacle to erupt from the ground, briefly knocking the target into the air and damaging nearby enemies."

 

Notes:

• Deals the damage dealt to the target to nearby enemies.
  
• Applies on-hit effects such as Pyre and Explosive Retrofit to all units in the radius.
  
• Radius is 1.5 units.
  
• Can critically strike separately for each enemy.
  
• Knockup lasts 0.5 seconds.
  

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Impaler Seed [Q]

"Rigas launches an egg which grows into a spine crawler with 80+40*LVL (+30% STR) health (120-800 at max level). Spine crawlers attack once every 1.5 seconds, dealing spell damage, and can be moved. Limit of 5 spine crawlers."

Level 1: 10 (+50% Weapon Damage) spell damage per hit

Level 2: 45 (+50% Weapon Damage) spell damage per hit

Level 3: 80 (+50% Weapon Damage) spell damage per hit

Level 4: 115 (+50% Weapon Damage) spell damage per hit

Energy Cost:

none

Cooldown:

24

Range:

5 (Placement)

 

Notes:

• Spine crawlers have the default burrow/unburrow abilities. Unburrowing is instant while burrowing takes about 0.4 seconds.
  
• Spine crawlers attack once every 1.5 seconds.
  
• Leveling the ability affects all spine crawlers on the field, not just spine crawlers he places in the future.
  
• Spine crawlers move at a speed of 2.2 when unburrowed
  

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Pathogen Surge [W]

"Ally Cast: Rigas heals the targeted ally over 1.5 seconds. Spine crawlers gain an additional 40% of the original value instantly.

Enemy Cast: Rigas infects the target with parasites for 3 seconds, reducing the weapon damage of enemies near it."

Level 1: Heals for 30 (+40% INT) health on ally, 20% damage debuff on enemies

Level 2: Heals for 55 (+40% INT) health on ally, 25% damage debuff on enemies

Level 3: Heals for 80 (+40% INT) health on ally, 30% damage debuff on enemies

Level 4: Heals for 105 (+40% INT) health on ally, 35% damage debuff on enemies

 

Energy Cost:

60

Cooldown:

7/6/5/4

Range:

4

 

Notes:

• The cloud stays attached to the enemy it was casted on.
  
• The debuff does not persist on enemies outside of the cloud if they leave it early.
  
• Spine crawlers only gain the additional 40% instantly. The other 100% is over 1.5 seconds.
  

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Grasping Roots [E]

"Rigas channels for 1 second, spreading creep in a large area. Nearby enemies take spell damage and are rooted during the channel. The creep lasts 30 seconds.

 

Rigas and his summoned units move 30% faster on creep."

Level 1: 50 (+50% INT) spell damage

Level 2: 95 (+50% INT) spell damage

Level 3: 140 (+50% INT) spell damage

Level 4: 185 (+50% INT) spell damage

 

Energy Cost:

60 / 65 / 70 / 75

Cooldown:

24 / 21 / 18 / 15

Range:

n/a

 

Notes:

• The creep radius is 12, the damage/root radius is 6.
  
• Rigas digs himself in above the ground and is visible during the channel.
  
• The damage is dealt instantly upon being rooted. Debuff immune enemies still take damage.
  
• If Rigas is interrupted before the channel ends, the creep starts to recede immediately.
  

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Today we Rise [R]

"Rigas summons uncontrollable locusts constantly at the target location for 5 seconds. The locusts wither enemies they touch, dealing spell damage and slowing them. 15 seconds after the initial cast, all locusts will expire."

Level 1: Spawns 10 locusts. Deals 40 (+20% INT) spell damage per second and slows by 30%

Level 2: Spawns 18 locusts. Deals 70 (+20% INT) spell damage per second and slows by 40%

Level 3: Spawns 26 locusts. Deals 100 (+20% INT) spell damage per second and slows by 50%

 

Energy Cost:

100

Cooldown:

90 / 60 / 30

Range:

8 (placement)

 

Notes:

• Creates a nydus worm at the target location, which can't be attacked or destroyed.
  
• The damage comes from a non-stacking debuff.
  
• Locusts move at a speed of 4.0 and have 60/90/120 heath (meant to be negligible but last a bit inside of an SHM aura).
  
• Locusts have a range of 3.
  
• Locusts cannot be controlled but will seek out pursue the nearest enemy, even through the fog of war.
  
• Enemies will take full damage as long as they are being hit by at least one locust.
  
• Locusts cannot be pushed around by enemy heroes. If an enemy is surrounded they will not be able to move without using a mobility skill/item.
  

Thanks to everyone for helping!

Edited November 25, 2013 by FruitNinja

[Simoneon]

Came here to say I like the direction. Not much to comment, though, because everything seems very well though-out and the skills are connected with each other. For example Heroic Passive with Q and R, and E with Q and R. Only the ultimate seems underwhelming, but maybe that's the point? The colonies are strong and the ultimate serves a utility purpose. My only concern would be his W, which seems a bit out of context. This skills makes the hero really good against physical damage carries when combined with the E AND R. What I'm trying to say, is that these three spells are addressed to the same thing. This concern is really minor and ignore it if you like :p

Balance issues: maybe the timer on his Q is a bit too high? The colonies would overrun the map, it seems. Especially when at lvl4 the skill has a 3 second CD.

Edited November 23, 2013 by Simoneon

[FruitNinja]

I felt like having two abilities that summon units would be too much to maintain brevity in the tooltips. Whenever you have an ability that summons a unit you need to specify how easily they are killed, how much damage they do, whether or not they stick to enemies easily, their range, etc. Since Rigas' primary form of dealing damage is his colonies, which are unreliable as they cannot move to chase his enemies, I figured that a CC version of Queen's banelings would be suitable to make his sunken colonies more reliable. The exact speeds and hp values are for ekco to tune, but the intent is that they are one-shotted by anything except periodic damage.

 

I'll be tuning the timer on the sunken colonies if it's excessive, but since it costs mana and the colonies only last 3:30 minutes at best, I'm not sure if it's a problem. That's one round of neutral creeps, which isn't a long time in game terms. If Rigas spawns too many he will have to back all the time and will fall behind in xp/creeps.

Edited November 23, 2013 by FruitNinja

[Moo]

Your Q is very OP. The base hp at max rank should be around 700-800 and the cooldown should be about ten seconds. If you have the current values, you could just plant a few colonies at a tower while your creep wave is there, heal the creeps and colonies, then leave, and the colonies are so tanky and deal enough damage to kill the tower. Also, your sunken colonies would give insane map control, since there is no max to them. You could put a few at jungle camps and have them solo them every time they spawned, they can be wards for a very long period of time, they can kill towers very easily, they will rarely die from timing out if you place them in a place where creeps can be in range of, which includes creeps in the jungle., since you could attack the jungle creeps or lane creeps to give them another huge chunk of time to live. If you stacked a couple colonies in the fog of war and your enemies walked into them it they could easily take out a large percentage of the enemy's hp even if they back off quickly, and no hero could even solo 2-3 colonies without higher range than the colonies until mid-late game, especially if the hero is nearby to heal them. You need to hugely nerf the Q or the hero will be insanely broken. I love the hero overall and his skillset has great synergy except for his ulti, which feels quite weak IMO, unless they block pathing and naturally try to surround enemies.

[Indo]

q sure is very op, ward river with them for anti gank, btw what is their range? if its more then 3 its op imo. the idea is nice but.. i think r will do some serious lagfest on lvl 3

[Moo]

q sure is very op, ward river with them for anti gank, btw what is their range? if its more then 3 its op imo. the idea is nice but.. i think r will do some serious lagfest on lvl 3

The Q has 6 range.

 

I'm not sure if that is the range to place colonies, or the range of the colonies, however.

[FruitNinja]

Your Q is very OP. The base hp at max rank should be around 700-800 and the cooldown should be about ten seconds. If you have the current values, you could just plant a few colonies at a tower while your creep wave is there, heal the creeps and colonies, then leave, and the colonies are so tanky and deal enough damage to kill the tower. Also, your sunken colonies would give insane map control, since there is no max to them. You could put a few at jungle camps and have them solo them every time they spawned, they can be wards for a very long period of time, they can kill towers very easily, they will rarely die from timing out if you place them in a place where creeps can be in range of, which includes creeps in the jungle., since you could attack the jungle creeps or lane creeps to give them another huge chunk of time to live. If you stacked a couple colonies in the fog of war and your enemies walked into them it they could easily take out a large percentage of the enemy's hp even if they back off quickly, and no hero could even solo 2-3 colonies without higher range than the colonies until mid-late game, especially if the hero is nearby to heal them. You need to hugely nerf the Q or the hero will be insanely broken. I love the hero overall and his skillset has great synergy except for his ulti, which feels quite weak IMO, unless they block pathing and naturally try to surround enemies.

 

This hero has no damage outside of the sunken colonies. Thus, they need to have a short cooldown (or else he will do nothing in teamfights if he doesn't have any present). The DPS per colony is actually pretty low (remember they attack once per 2 seconds) and they will take a lot of damage from neutral creeps and require constant healing to stay alive in the jungle. It's also significantly gated by mana since Rigas needs them to be a threat in lane.

 

The health seems high, but remember that they are Rigas' only reliable damage output and lategame an AGI carry can probably 3-shot them within a second. I could make them less effective at tanking towers by giving them base damage resist and lower overall health, but then Gravity Edge would allow casters to kill them instantly.

 

Basically, the way I see it, they (the colonies) need to be strong without being abusable. You're looking at the ability as if it were a single ability on a champion with other means of dealing damage, but you have to look at the champion as a whole. His sunken colonies aren't just an ability, they define the champion entirely. So while I understand that they would be strong for pushing towers and I will try to come up with a solution for it, giving them a 10 second cooldown is just not an option for a skill that does 50 (+15% INT) Spell DPS on its own.

 

As for the map control they provide, jakk's spyder mines last longer, have a lower mana cost, and are stealthed, whereas sunken colonies can be cleared by anyone walking through (which means rigas needs to go there himself to replace it). If Jakk's spyder mines aren't OP due to their map control, then these aren't either. Rigas is a hero that depends on map control even moreso than Jakk or Queen, requiring his ult to kill anyone with half a brain since he has no CC outside of it.

Edited November 25, 2013 by FruitNinja

[Moo]

 

 

This hero has no damage outside of the sunken colonies. Thus, they need to have a short cooldown (or else he will do nothing in teamfights if he doesn't have any present). The DPS per colony is actually pretty low (remember they attack once per 2 seconds) and they will take a lot of damage from neutral creeps and require constant healing to stay alive in the jungle. It's also significantly gated by mana since Rigas needs them to be a threat in lane.

 

The health seems high, but remember that they are Rigas' only reliable damage output and lategame an AGI carry can probably 3-shot them within a second. I could make them less effective at tanking towers by giving them base damage resist and lower overall health, but then Gravity Edge would allow casters to kill them instantly.

 

Basically, the way I see it, they (the colonies) need to be strong without being abusable. You're looking at the ability as if it were a single ability on a champion with other means of dealing damage, but you have to look at the champion as a whole. His sunken colonies aren't just an ability, they define the champion entirely. So while I understand that they would be strong for pushing towers and I will try to come up with a solution for it, giving them a 10 second cooldown is just not an option for a skill that does 50 (+15% INT) Spell DPS on its own.

 

As for the map control they provide, jakk's spyder mines last longer, have a lower mana cost, and are stealthed, whereas sunken colonies can be cleared by anyone walking through (which means rigas needs to go there himself to replace it). If Jakk's spyder mines aren't OP due to their map control, then these aren't either. Rigas is a hero that depends on map control even moreso than Jakk or Queen, requiring his ult to kill anyone with half a brain since he has no CC outside of it.

I understand what you are saying, but the ability is still OP. It is a design flaw that it is his only damage output, since it requires that skill to be powerful for it to work. The problem is that this hero's only real role would be to push and provide map control, since he is greatly outshines by other heroes at everything else. So this requires the hero have a skillset that achieves this, and your skillset has made him VERY strong at these two roles, and suck at everything else. The reason your colonies provide more map control than jakk's mines is that by stacking a couple colonies at a neutral camp would be able to take the camp, and that could be used to deny enemy jungle without risk, which jakk's mines cannot do. The colonies could be stacked around a corner, and kill someone who walks around it very quickly early on if you get enough, which is very easy with a 3 second cooldown. The hp is too high because the colonies would only die quickly endgame unless you have multiple heroes to clear them. Two colonies could easily zone an enemy for too long a period of time because of their high hp, and you could make more colonies faster than they could kill them with that 3 second cooldown. The high hp would also allow for easy tanking of towers by them and taking of the jungle by only colonies. The low cooldown of the colonies would make you able to stack colonies very, very quickly, and an ihan crystal would be able to keep you in lane long enough to farm, since you could make a large amount of colonies with the energy it gives, thus effectively eliminating the energy problems that would hold back the hero.

Suggestions: Increase the cooldown of the Q to 10 at max level, change the heal/blind to an AoE nuke/blind, change the ulti to spawning a lower amount of locusts that deal small damage unless you stand in them all for a few seconds, slow by about 20%, have around the norm for hero movespeed, and automatically target the nearest enemies. They would also gain a speed boost on creep. They cannot target towers. The cooldown of this would be very short, about 30 seconds. Creep would increase their movespeed.

These changes would make the hero gain higher damage potential overall, lower damage to towers, lower map control slightly, and increase teamfight presence.

[Moo]

The E should also root enemies in a radius around the hero for a small amount of time and make it cancelable to give him some hard cc and allow for a more supportive playstyle.

[FruitNinja]

I understand what you are saying, but the ability is still OP. It is a design flaw that it is his only damage output, since it requires that skill to be powerful for it to work. The problem is that this hero's only real role would be to push and provide map control, since he is greatly outshines by other heroes at everything else. So this requires the hero have a skillset that achieves this, and your skillset has made him VERY strong at these two roles, and suck at everything else. The reason your colonies provide more map control than jakk's mines is that by stacking a couple colonies at a neutral camp would be able to take the camp, and that could be used to deny enemy jungle without risk, which jakk's mines cannot do. The colonies could be stacked around a corner, and kill someone who walks around it very quickly early on if you get enough, which is very easy with a 3 second cooldown. The hp is too high because the colonies would only die quickly endgame unless you have multiple heroes to clear them. Two colonies could easily zone an enemy for too long a period of time because of their high hp, and you could make more colonies faster than they could kill them with that 3 second cooldown. The high hp would also allow for easy tanking of towers by them and taking of the jungle by only colonies. The low cooldown of the colonies would make you able to stack colonies very, very quickly, and an ihan crystal would be able to keep you in lane long enough to farm, since you could make a large amount of colonies with the energy it gives, thus effectively eliminating the energy problems that would hold back the hero.

Suggestions: Increase the cooldown of the Q to 10 at max level, change the heal/blind to an AoE nuke/blind, change the ulti to spawning a lower amount of locusts that deal small damage unless you stand in them all for a few seconds, slow by about 20%, have around the norm for hero movespeed, and automatically target the nearest enemies. They would also gain a speed boost on creep. They cannot target towers. The cooldown of this would be very short, about 30 seconds. Creep would increase their movespeed.

These changes would make the hero gain higher damage potential overall, lower damage to towers, lower map control slightly, and increase teamfight presence.

 

How is that a design flaw? I think it's a unique playstyle that would be diluted if he had damage elsewhere as the sunken colonies would have to be weaker to compensate for the additional power.

 

Remember that the colonies do not heal by themselves, and don't do much damage unless you spend a lot of mana to stack multiple colonies at the same camp.

 

I would say that the idea is better tested in practice rather than in theory. A ten second cooldown, though, would mean that a single colony would have to be just as strong if not stronger than it is now or else his teamfighting would be far less strategic and effective. Sunken colony formations would be impossible to set up in the heat of combat.

 

That said, I'll look at your suggestions and see if I can come up with something that fits both of our views on how things should be played out.

 

 

 

 

EDIT: Rework posted!

Edited November 25, 2013 by FruitNinja

[Moo]

I like the new direction a lot. Do the locusts each deal that much damage per second? That would be very OP if you could isolate an enemy and use your passive and E to lock them down, and then your locusts would deal insane dps. Am I misunderstanding something?

[FruitNinja]

It applies a non-stacking debuff. I made the notes more clear, but surrounding the enemy with locusts just screws up their pathing, it doesn't do more damage. That's where the DPS from the spine crawlers comes in.

 

The biggest issue I forsee is that controlling spine crawlers might be very difficult in fast-paced games. I mean, Tassadar was considered hard to play back when nobody played him, and he only has one clone.

Edited November 25, 2013 by FruitNinja

[Moo]

It applies a non-stacking debuff. I made the notes more clear, but surrounding the enemy with locusts just screws up their pathing, it doesn't do more damage. That's where the DPS from the spine crawlers comes in.

 

The biggest issue I forsee is that controlling spine crawlers might be very difficult in fast-paced games. I mean, Tassadar was considered hard to play back when nobody played him, and he only has one clone.

I would make them all selectable by pressing V, and it would still keep control of your hero as well, like a built-in hot key for all current colonies, similar to how jakk's mines can be detonated.