Campaign Hero

I'm posting here in hoping to get some ideas and brainstorming for a hero I'm designing. What I'm looking for is a hero that fits well together with the Paladin (Arthas more specifically), preferably both game-play wise and somewhat story-wise as well.

The hero should blend well with the other melee heroes with 4 abilities (1 ultimate) and balanced stats ranging from level 1-10.

As the paladin is a heavily support-oriented hero, my current theme for the hero is a of a more tanky sort to utilize the paladins heals and aura. I'm calling the hero-type Guardian to match his abilities (As for the story he is assigned as a head-commander in a royal elite guard for Arthas, therefore a "Guardian").

The model I'm using is the Royal Captain by Tranquil.
His current abilities are:

The idea is that the so called "Guardian" taunts enemies that deals a lot of damage and then goes into the defensive stance while being supported by the paladins heals.

My biggest concern is that the taunt and tanking makes managing fights a bit too easy, so I'd like to somehow change that. I'm not sure of how to do it without making the Guardian useless as a standalone hero though. Note however, that I'm otherwise pretty satisfied with the hero, so I'm not making this post because I need a rework of the design. Minor tweaks are fine as well.

There may very well be some serious balance/design issues that I'm not aware of, please be kind and notify me if you see anything specific!

If you have any ideas or suggestions I'd be glad to hear them! (If you have an idea for a new ability/hero, I'd very much appreciate if you could link an matching resource (icon/model) as I'm not an artist!).


Cheers!

It seems like at level 3 Defensive Stance has the same duration as cooldown, and I'm not sure about this specific hero but with only 40 mana cost that seems really effective right now, even with the -40% damage (since it is assumed the Guardian is with other DPS units and such). However, maybe by making it so that after the main duration of Defensive Stance the Guardian takes more %damage for a few seconds? This way you can't really spam it since in certain situations more damage on the Guardian could kill him, but it can still be used how it is supposed to be reducing tons of damage when it is needed the most. Also, I'm not sure about your fixed health numbers/damages etc., but Shield Slam seems really weak for the mana cost compared to the other skills. 175 damage at level 3, even with a 3 second stun, is basically nothing for costing more than any other non-ultimate skill.

The abilities don't really seem to blend well with the standard melee heroes at all. Abilities with a tradeoff like your Defensive stance tend to be unit abilities in WC3, such as Defend and Berserk. Hero abilities already require the investment of skill points and, if they are active abilities, mana, so they tend to be without a drawback, otherwise they just aren't worth the investment.

Consider this: a 25% damage reduction is equivalent to roughly 5-9 bonus armour (depending on how much base armour the hero has, the two required bonus values correspond to 0-10 base armour). That's about the same as the armour bonus of a level 3 spiked carapace (7), a passive ability which also returns damage to melee attackers, while your ability is an active ability that costs mana and reduces the damage you deal on top of that. Doesn't seem very balanced.

Taunt is another ability that doesn't seem very hero-ish. It doesn't change anything on the battlefield: no damage or heal, no buffs or debuffs. It just disrupts the enemy control a bit. Sure, it works as a unit ability with no mana cost, but as a hero ability it is not very convincing since it doesn't really do anything other than make your hero die faster.

Shield slam is the most promising ability in the list and even that seems underpowered compared to other melee hero skills. At level 3, both stun duration and damage are at half that of Storm bolt for nearly the same mana cost.

The ultimate doesn't really seem like one. It's hard to find another skill that it would compare to, area of effect buffs aren't very common among hero skills. The closest I can think of is Roar, a basic unit ability which for the same mana cost achieves nearly the same effective damage output increase (25% vs your 30%) for a much longer duration and with a much shorter cooldown.

Overall, the abilities are underwhelming. I get it, I've had the same problem whenever I was designing combat heroes: he's not a magical hero, so he doesn't have powerful magic at his disposal. That's the problem, though: all other WC3 heroes do. Even the Blademaster has some skills that seem more than just good swordsmanship. You have limited your design space to a point where you can no longer make an effective hero. You need to either give him some magic and consequently stronger skills or turn it from a hero to a special campaign unit like the captain, Shandris or Naisha.

One of my main concerns is that the paladin itself is a rather bland hero with a heal, divine shield (nearly useless in the campaign), passive aura and resurrection. I want to make the new hero interesting, while still not making him too different from the paladins playstyle. Excluding the mana cost, the Mountain King, for example, is both more fun to play, but also has a huge noticeable impact on the field with his high damage stormbolt and thunderclap. This is not the kind of hero I want (even though the Mountain King appears in the campaign).

One of my thoughts was a templar-kind of hero, righteous and redemptive with abilities focusing on punishing enemies (perhaps some kind of self-sacrifice ability as well?) without having too much low cooldown "bolting n' stomping" spells.

Another problem I'm having is that I tried to design the hero to match the Paladin, while he himself as other melee-heroes are designed for melee games and therefore more independent. This contradicts my plan of my hero blending well in wc3, I'll see how I can improve upon this on a remake.

Something that I should really add though that I didn't mention is that the hero has an innate passive ability called "Loyalty" for mana managing (which is why the manacosts are a bit odd at the moment). What it basically does is that it gives the Guardian mana on each hit. The amount degrades as the campaign progresses (the Guardian looses faith in Arthas due to his actions, effectively leaving him in the end of the campaign). The Guardian has a pretty low manapool, which was managed through combat.

I liked the idea of the descriptive and degrading part of the ability. It, however, also contradicts my goal to make a melee-hero. I'll probably remove the effect of the ability, and keep the icon and description.


As mentioned I wanted the abilities too feel "blizzardy/wc3"-like, which made me base them on existing abilities. I realize I've might've gone a bit overboard mimicking blizzard's abilities. I'll consider the lack of drawbacks you mentioned when I redesign him.


Very good point, I hadn't even considered comparing the two as I was mostly looking at the footmen's Defend.


Taunt made sense for me at the start as I wanted a tank/protector sort of hero. After trying it in gameplay I noticed that it didn't really add anything but less microing low health footmen.


That doesn't surprise me seeing how Shield Slam is basically a melee-ranged Storm Bolt :P
I wanted it being more focused on the stun and less on the damage than Storm Bolt, but seem to have messed up the leveling (Level 1 is somewhat balanced though it could use some work as well). Seeing how the model has a shield slam animation that I'd like to put in use, I'll likely keep some kind of similar spell.


The ultimate is basically Endurance Aura on steroids. The problem when I made this was that increasing the damage further would make the army cut through the enemy like butter. And I was a bit blind on the cooldown and manacost which I compared to the Paladin's Resurrection. I never liked this ability very much so I'll most likely scrap it.



The reason I made this thread was that I felt the hero needed a redesign of some sort. He's meant to be on-par with the other heroes. I'll look at the Blademaster (as well as other warrior-oriented heroes) and try to figure out how I can mix abilities and combat.


I see that the abilities are indeed imbalanced (mainly underpowered). I'd rather buff than nerf his abilities. Shield Slam is really messed up as it levels up. However I'm likely to remake his abilities seeing how I'm not entirely satisfied with them.

I appreciate your thoughts! The final result will hopefully be something I'm satisfied with and proud of. I just need a nudge when I'm walking off in the wrong direction.

I can't know exactly how you want your hero to work, so my ideas might be off, but anyway here are some thoughts I've had based on the abilities you've described so far:

Shield slam is a decent ability, it would just need to be powered up to attain the status of a hero skill. Think about the Tauren Chieftain, his two active hero skills both have physical animations, yet the abilities themselves are much wider blasts projected from these animations. In this case, the shield bash could be an area spell that affects all enemies in front of the caster, something like a very short ranged and wide shockwave or a directional war stomp. The damage values you currently use are consistent with WC3 area damage skills, adding stun to that might be a bit much but then again, the spell would have a much smaller area of effect than, say, fan of knives. Normally, I would also suggest adding knockback, but that doesn't really fit with WC3 melee abilities.

Loyalty could make a good passive skill, but mana regeneration doesn't really fit on a combat hero. Also, a mana regeneration ability isn't worth anything on its own, even Archamge's aura could in theory be chosen as the first skill in a game where you have many casters, but get the Archmage as a third hero, but a skill that only regenerates the mana of the hero is completely useless until later levels. Therefore, I don't think an ability like that can be adapted to WC3 campaign/melee gameplay. What could maybe work is an ability that restores mana to other units, which you could then use in combination with Arthas, but it seems too specifically geared towards this particular synergy since it makes little sense to use it on regular units. Maybe if it was an area ability like Spirit Touch it could work, since it'd affect regular units even if players would mainly use it just to restore the mana of other heroes.

Not sure if anything can be done with taunt, I'd make a completely different ability.

Defensive stance could be replaced by a simple two-part passive ability that boosts armour and does something else, like Spiked Carpace does. One idea I had for that something else was the passive item defend ability which reduces incoming piercing damage. That would really make this ability a counterpart to the Spiked Carpace skill - the latter counters melee attacks, the former ranged. If you want to make it an active ability, it has to do more than just that. There are few self-buff active hero skills to compare it to, I can think of two: Divine Shield and Chemical Rage. If it isn't as strong as one of these two abilities, it'll be underpowered.

As for the ultimate cutting through enemies like butter, that's what ultimates do. Think of Starfall, Death&Decay, etc. Blizzard did introduce some weaker ultimates with some of the tavern heroes, though, you could look at those. They have shorter cooldowns and a bit lower mana costs than the big ultimates, but are still strong. Unlike Raise Dead and Ressurection which make a difference of 6 units, these ultimates make a difference of 2, for example Charm (which removes one enemy unit and gives you one), Doom (which removes one enemy unit and gives you a stronger one with a timed life) and Transmute (which removes one enemy unit and gives you its worth in resources). That's the minimum power level a skill should have to count as an ultimate.

I originally had a knockback on the Shield Slam, but just as you said it doesn't fit in very well in this case. I like the idea of making it an area spell. I'm uncertain if daze (thunderclap) or stun would fit best, both would fit for a "protector" though. I'll look through the editor and see what other debuffs there are. The Shield Slam spell will stay in one form or the other though.


I can see your point and I'll have to agree here. I considered making the managain AoE whenever the Guardian struck a unit. However, I feel it would be too redundant with the Brilliance Aura that Jaina gives. I would however like some kind of ability that makes the player want to engage the Guardian into battle. The theme of the hero is to be in the heat of the battle, so something to encourage that would be nice.


I'll likely just remove the ability altogether, it didn't really work out how I'd hoped.


I could make the Defensive Stance have an passive armor buff, as well as an active damage reducing buff. However, to my knowledge there are no other default active abilities that has an passive effect, so I'd think it'd leap out too much. Making it a counterpart to Spiked Carpace could work out well I believe. Great idea!


That's true also. I've been considering removing the Rallying Shout ultimate (or make it an normal ability) as well as Taunt. Then make Loyalty an passive with some kind of morale-boosting aura, and put the Defensive Stance as an ultimate with short cooldown (similar to the tavern heroes).

That would make it look like this:
Shield Slam (AoE Damage + Daze/Stun)
Loyalty (Aura) or Rallying Shout (Activated Aura)
Unknown Ability
Defensive Stance (Low cooldown Aura for short power-tanking)

However, I can't see how Defensive Stance would fit as an ultimate in a melee game (only the AI is stupid enough to target the Guardian), so it doesn't make much sense to use it. Another concern is how most (if not all) ultimates pretty much defines the hero (both gameplay-wise, but especially story-wise). Examples could be Earthquake, Reincarnation and Mass Teleport, which both have uses in melee but also reveals a lot about the heroclass (Far Seer > Shaman, Tauren's relation to the "Earth Mother", And the Archmage).

I'll have to try and establish some kind of basic lore about the hero and work out an ultimate from there I think.

For Defensive Stance, it sort of DOES relate to the hero (being a Guardian and all, you would assume high defense and such). If you really wanted it to be more related you could perhaps do an aura to buff some sort of defense? Since the hero is meant to guard others, it would make sense for his defense to be high but it also makes sense for others to have increased armor as well (perhaps armor to all nearby allies but more armor to himself, for example).

Also, as a Guardian hero, you can approach it from two ways from what I can see. If you look at other similar heroes, specifically the Tauren Chieftain and the Paladin, they have their own methods of buffing allies. The Paladin is obvious, giving off heals, revives and armor, while trying to get the enemy to attack anyone BUT the Paladin himself (Divine Shield is for this). On the contrary, the Tauren Chieftain WANTS enemies to attack him, given spells like Reincarnation and Warstomp. If they don't, he has Endurance Aura which is a pain if not gotten rid of and Shockwave (some good DPS). Right now it seems like you want the Guardian to be like the Tauren Chieftain, so perhaps give him some sort of "threat" to the enemies. It'll be similar to a melee hero in it that he's not completely useless if the enemy decides not to target him.

I understand the hero concept (keep it physical), and I feel a necessity to help you out, since I also have a hero in my map that albeit isn't meant for melee maps, has the same name and role. Are you sure about minor tweaks? He seems quite useless for a hero. His job is to tank, but it doesn't seem like he can do it well enough to justify having him around. Regardless, I will give you suggestions.

How much mana does this hero have? Knowing how good he is at spamming is something I want to note, since mana seems to be the issue, here. Also, I think that you are imposing too many limits on your hero is allowed to do. I had this problem as well; my Guardian hero had problems with skills because I strictly wanted him to be physical-aspect only. I suggest some lenience-- personally, I really think he needs it.

His current skills are underwhelming for a technical tanking hero. I love these kinds of heroes since I play melee games defensively (which I probably shouldn't). If you want him the way his is in your first post, I think you should take up Anitarf's advice and turn him into a special unit like Naisha or Misha.

Shield Slam is not strong enough; you made it as melee-ranged Storm Bolt. It is a lot cheaper, but I feel like this is only reserved for heroes or emergency threats. With such a low cooldown I would think that this is something he could spam, but then again-- here comes the mana issue. I suppose that if he is indeed a hero for the Humans than the Archmage does wonders here-- as the wizard should be, so you could go either way here. It depends on whether or the player has access to the Archmage in the campaign.

If mana really is the issue, I'd say make a skill that allows the Guardian to gain mana for taking damage. Or something. This is where Taunt comes in. I will be very straight forward about this: Taunt is crap. It costs mana-- something that the Mountain Giant or any unit that can Taunt never has to worry about it. Plus, I believe the normal cooldown for Taunt is always below 10 seconds. The limit for how many units can be taunted should be higher-- I believe normal Taunt has a limit of 5, but you have to max out this Taunt to do that. If you want to keep Taunt, make something happen after it's used.

Hmm... How about a Taunt with the two added effects: Stops any unit that is channeling and removes debuffs from surrounding allies. This stops heroes like the Archmage's Blizzard and makes Starfall and Tranquility a complete waste, so NE players would have to be very careful about using those skills if someone is using a Guardian hero (I know it's for a campaign; pure example). This Taunt isn't a stun, but it's super cheap, has a super low cooldown, makes debuffer line ups cry because a hero has a better version of the Priest's indiscriminate Dispel (removes all buffs from all units), and is annoying to heroes that need channel.

Defensive Stance should do something else and not just be a Defend that can be leveled up. For something similar, my Guardian has three versions of an ability that sacrifices all of his movement speed. The first one stuns any enemy that tries to normally attack him (before taking damage-- finally, that trigger event is useful! LOL xD), the second version nulls all physical damage that he takes, and the final version causes him to deal damage back to the enemies that hurt him proportionate to the amount of damage he takes.

All three versions are useful depending on how the player likes to play their tanking hero. The first is before damage is taken, the second is as soon as damage is taken, the third is after damage taken is calculated.

The ultimate needs some help. I honestly don't think that a 10 second buff that is weaker than the everlasting Endurance Aura justifies a cooldown of 3 minutes and 40 seconds. Unless you made a typo.

If you're afraid about whether or not the Guardian will make the game too easy, since this is a campaign hero, you could make situations where limits are imposed. There are plenty of ways: making skills unusable in certain scenarios, useless in certain situations, or because the current mission creates problems for this hero in particular. i.e. the Guardian needs to be a tank in two spots, but obviously can't be in both spots at once.

I'll put my thoughts here before the responds so you won't have to read through them all to get to them. Some of my reasoning are woven into the responds though.

This is what I'm currently thinking of, thoughts and criticism is still very much appreciated. I'll go through each ability and explain what it does, and what I hope it'll add)

Shield Slam / Shield Bash
(This ability is now more of a cone-formed thunderclap, changes include making it AoE, adjusting damage/cost and exchanging the stun for a daze.)

Defensive Stance
(This ability is now passive +armor, however, the Guardian also gains mana when struck by enemy units (Haven't decided on melee/ranged conditions here). I'm unsure of how to balance it tough so that it doesn't feel useless in 1v1 combat, but isn't overpowered when being focus-targeted. My other consideration was changing the mana effect to or adding a range damage reflection. Having all three of them feels like adding too much though and making it unclear what the ability is about.)

Redemption (I'd like to have this name for an ultimate, but the ability I came up with fits more for a normal ability)
(This is a toggle-able ability like Immolation. When turned on, any nearby that takes damage reflects a % of it back against the attacker. Basically a boosted Thorns Aura.)

Unknown (Ultimate)
(What this ability does is basically a instant cast mass ensnare (or channeled perhaps?), something like this. Duration and cooldown could be tweaked for balance)

I hope this gives the Guardian more versatility other than just mitigating damage. Shield Slam should be useful in most occasions, both melee and campaign.
Defensive Stance will enable him to be (and want to be) in the front lines, while making sure he can keep his abilities up (especially Redemption).
Redemption is basically what'll make the Guardian the focus of attention. It should deal enough damage to make the enemy want to take him down in fights. However, he shouldn't be able to sustain it for too long without the mana from Defensive Stance. So the enemy could choose to let him drain his mana before attacking.
The ultimate should be useful in a lot of situations as well. Both aggressively and defensively. It doesn't synergize very well with his other abilities though, maybe it doesn't have to since it's useful on its own?


While some kind of defensive aura would fit the Guardian, I feel that it would be too redundant with the Paladin's Devotion Aura. I also don't think there are default abilities that gives different levels of effects on different targets (The only exclusion I can think of is Holy Light, which has opposite effects).


Indeed the Guardian should be more similar to the Tauren Chieftain in that he should be a primary target. I don't think I want the Guardian to be the source of the damage, seeing how his focus is to protect, not to be the damage dealer.


I'm very much open to major changes as well, seeing as how I'm most likely to redo him. He is indeed very useless in a melee game with his current abilities. I was mainly focusing on his interaction in the campaign (vs AI opponents). However, he currently makes the campaign easier, but doesn't really add anything interesting to the table. I appreciate and consider any suggestions and thoughts I'm given.


Currently he has a rather small mana pool at level 1 ((14 int)*(15 per point)+100 base = 310). He also gains very little intelligence per level, so I tried to balance this out with his 5th innate ability that gives mana on per strike.


The Guardian is meant to be on par with the Paladin and other heroes, so I'd rather rework his design than leave him as is.


Shield Slam will be reworked along with the other abilities, I'll make a few notes on my thoughts above the responds. I believe Jaina appears in two(?) missions in the RoC campaign, which he's being implemented for.


The basic taunt will likely be scrapped. Either I'll see if I can make something more interesting of it, or I'll introduce another ability instead. I like the special effect taunt, I'll see what abilities I can come up with and how they'd fit together.


My reasoning was mostly basing the cooldown upon Resurrection, and the movement speed felt a bit overdosed on tests.


Situations where some of his abilities would be less useful, sure, that'd work and will probably be the case throughout the campaign. I will however not disable them or similarly make them totally useless by changing the game flow (If that was what you were suggesting)

Shield Slam/Bash seems completely fine now.

Defensive Stance is weird. First of all, if it's a passive, the name itself is kinda weird because it seems as if once he learns it he's ALWAYS in the Defensive Stance (I guess that makes some sense... whatever). But about the effects, I think the mana intake when he gets hit doesn't make sense in relation to the spell name. Even disregarding that, it really does feel pretty useless on its own. I think you should not add the ranged deflection, because as you said three effects are way too many and if it stacked with Redemption it'll probably be too much. I'm sure there's a way to make this ability more useful in more situations yet not imbalanced, but I currently can't think of anything reasonable. It's just that giving him +armor and +mana when he gets hit seems counter productive, as the enemy has no reason to attack him besides for Redemption basically, and even without attacking him, Redemption will go away faster because of the constant mana draining.

Redemption by itself though seems fine, just make sure to balance its mana cost with how much it reflects back in relation to Thorns Aura (especially since it can reflect ranged attacks).

The ultimate as you said seems to lack synergy, but it does give the Guardian the versatility that he needs. All I can think of right now is that he mass ensnare so the position of units are in a way where they are forced to attack him (so its good as he gets mana) or so that he can Shield Slam effectively. However, it still seems a bit "forced" since ensnare doesn't really match a Guardian hero imo.