Hero Concept - Illusionist. Need Spell Idea

I'm making a hero for my map called the Illusionist - she specializes in confusing the enemy and attacking with illusions. I'm very happy with most of her, but I want to revamp one of her abilities. I'm hoping someone on this forum wants to take the time to come up with an idea for an ability.

Here's a quick explanation of the game to help come up with viable ideas. Basically, it's a survival map where a group of heroes works together against large waves of creep. It's fairly similar to Orc Gladiators, or 1 player Enfo's Team Survival.

Every hero has a special ability that never levels up, but they start with it. They also have 3 normal abilities and 1 ultimate. Here is the current hero:

Illusionist
Special: Shroud of Darkness: The Illusionist places a ward on the ground that covers all nearby units in a shroud of darkness, rendering them completely invisible.
Imagined Burden: Problem Ability The Illusionist places a psychological weight on a target enemy, slowing his movement speed by 65% for 120 seconds. Cooldown and Mana cost decrease with level.
Illusory Copy: Create a illusion copy of target unit. Damage dealt increases with level, damage received decreases with level.
Traitor's Mark: The Illusionist marks an enemy unit as a traitor, temporarily allowing her to control the unit.
Kage Bunshin: The Illusionist spawns a large number of illusion copies of herself. All illusions deal 15% damage, but die in one attack.

Basically, Imagined Burden isn't really a versatile enough, or really useful enough spell. Generally, your best strategy is to find a place to camp and stay, and slow movement speed isn't really going to help you out there.

Anyone else have any ideas? I can give you credit if you ask for it. I just want something that goes with the theme of an illusionist hero.

How about a spell called Nightmare that makes illusions of several different targets' greatest fears and they have lowered strength and movement speed until the spell goes away. It would be like Imagined Burden, only not as long-lasting and it reduces more than just movement speed.

I've been thinking about something like what you suggested, kind of a buff to imagined burden...it would even be very easy to lower their attack speed, like they were frozen in fear (since the spell is based off of Slow which has that capability built in)...but I'm thinking about dropping that concept entirely and doing something completely new.

I like your fear idea...it might even be cool to just completely freeze the unit, like they are frozen in fear and can't do anything. Just give it a lower duration and make them basically useless for a time...hmm...

The spell may be more useful to you as-is if you make it castable from great range, so that you have the opportunity to control which enemies get to you when.

Also, just reducing movement speed is going to pretty useless when they get near you, but adding in reduced attack speed might help.

Lastly, consider triggering it to be Area of Effect, or using Drunken Haze as the base.

Try this on for size:

Channeling Spell: Mindgames
In a large area of effect, the Illusionist will summon forth visions of anger and taunting in random locations. These illusions are weak, but damaging them will cause the damage to be returned to the assaultant.

What happens: You channel an area of effect spell.. think Monsoon/Rain of Fire/Blizzard. While channeling, create a "Taunting Illusion" unit on a random location in the be-chancelled area every 4 seconds, with an expiration timer of 3 seconds. These units have a modified "Spiked Carpache", which returns damage, and a Taunt ability. Make a trigger so that whenever one of these units appears on the map, they automatically use their taunt ability.

Result: The enemies in the area will run from one illusion to the other, attacking them. With each hit they do on those illusions, they suffer damage themselves.

Panto -

That's a good idea, but I should have mentioned that I already have that spell. I wanted to avoid making them too similar. The Geo Mage has AoE Entangle which has a huge cast range -- she pretty much completely stops groups of enemies from anywhere on the map.

Incidentally, Silence is an excellent spell for this (I can't say for Drunken Haze), since it has a movement speed modifier. Just change the attacks prevented to none and the buff to entangle and Voila.

Archon -

That would be a fun idea...allow her to create a bunch of dummy targets that end up damaging whatever attacks them. I have a somewhat similar ability (one hero creates a dummy target that enemy units attack, but it doesn't return damage). I'm definitely considering this idea. My primary issue with it is that it seems like it is more than it is -- as you described the ability, it's primary purpose is damage dealing and not so much distraction. I might be putting too much thought into it though, I'll think on it some more. Maybe I will have it create a large number of targets that end up acting as a temporary distraction and deal a small amount of damage, I'm not sure. I'll think on it some more.

Thanks for the input and ideas! If anyone else has ideas, feel free to share them as well.

EDIT: Hey cool, this is post #150...and I have 1500 gold! Amazing!

It serves two purposes... damage is really its secondry purpose... the damage isnt high, and only works for melee units.

What really makes this skill useful is that a large area of units will stop attacking heroes, for an extended period of time as long as this spell is channeled. New tauting units will keep appearing, will keep taunting, and the enemies wills witch from target to target.. but never to one of the heroes.

I guess I was imagining that all the illusions would only have 1 hp, so they wouldn't take that much damage. If they could take a few hits, and I spawned one every 2 seconds, it might work out very well.

I'm going to go ahead and code this ability to try out, it sounds cool in theory.

Aye. I'd say a good 8 to 10 hits should make them die. If not, then their expiration timers shouldve run out already. :)

Hey!

I did it, got it working, and am pretty happy with it. It's a pretty neat ability, and it gets bonus points because it the majority of the mobs in the AoE just run back and forth looking stupid. Unfortunately, it won't really make a good screenshot since you only have one or two visions of anger at a time. It works really well on the first bonus round though!

Incidentally, I also used a variant of Crunksta's idea. I changed Imagined Burden and called it "Terror". It takes unit attack/move speed down by 80%, basically making them useless. I dropped Traitor's Mark as an ability, since I liked the general idea of the ability but it had too high of a possibility for exploits.

Thanks for the help everyone!

Congrats. When your map is finished, I'd love to see the final spell uploaded at wc3sear.ch, if you want to share. :)

Well, trust me, you don't want to wait until this map is finished, I don't really ever finish my map, it just keeps getting adjusted.

But sure, I could upload it at wc3sear.ch, even though it only took about 10 minutes to make (it worked perfectly on the first test!). I'll post a link here soon.

Wish that'd happen to me moreoften.

Some more ideas:

Improved Invincibility:
- Like paladin's Divine Shiled but makes the unit invisible as well

Shadow Door:
- Teleports the caster to a friendly unit

Phantasmal Killer:
- Summons an invulnerable phantom to attack enemies

Decoy
- Summons a unit that can't attack but can cast taunt. Has a lot of hit points!

Hypnotism
- Disables the enemy (just like Sleep)

OK, posted the Mind Games spell up on wc3sear.ch. You can find it here

Link!