Tauren Chieftain remake

[doomhathcometh]

Survivalist: active (costs 100 mana, 20 cd). Increases HP regen by 10/20/30/40 per second for 10 seconds.

Earth Rend: the tauren chieftain can tear very earth asunder. creates a fissure at target location. On springing up, deals 50/100/150/200 damage and stuns for 1 sec within 200 range of that target. The fissure then gushes out liquid magma, dealing 1/2/3/4 damage per second to all within 300 range. Lasts 20 seconds.

Anger of the Chief: do not feed the tauren carrots. He becomes excedingly angry, dealing 50%/100%/150%/200% more damage for 5 seconds. You do not control him for this period though. CD: 1 min

Ultimate: Rally the Troops: the tauren chieftain is never alone. He summons 6/12 tauren minions to do his bidding (combo of the casters and melee)?

Made this in a few min, needs work.
-Doom

[light]

Survivalist is too weak.

Earth Rend's DPS aspect is sorely useless, needs a buff/tweak.

Anger of the Cheif is a one-shot pwn nuke, I'd like it more if it had a lower CD, since he doesn't have a splashing attack and such, not controlling him would be chaos in progress.

The Ultimate is pretty random......

I can't see a defined playstyle or even a way to play him. He seems like an all-rounder. A weird one at that.

[doomhathcometh]

Anger of the chief is only good against single heroes. Or unit spawn heroes. The earth rend can be useful, as it deals direct damage, stuns, and DOT in an area. good against creeps. Survivalist may need a boost, but mayb not.

He is all rounded. He has one ability for pushing, one for solo-ing, and two balanced.

-Doom

[light]

Still, I dislike the extra 1/2/3/4 dps on Earth Rend. It seems random.

[doomhathcometh]

Random? He's creating a volcanic fissure. It makes perfect sense.

-Doom

[amdeadnow]

lol earth rend is too strong even the mountain cant stun that long anymore.

[doomhathcometh]

Stuns 1 sec. What u talkin' bout

-Doom

[thedeathstalker]

The real problem with this hero is not a single skill actually relies on or is impacted by any other skill. They're all just a grab-bag of abilities that don't add up to anything even remotely interesting. You've got a rather pitiful passive regen (5hp/s for a tank is useless in combat, pretty much), an attack spike (which just seems odd all around, not to mention inherently disables any type of skill or fun having on the player's side), and a summoning ultimate (again, has nothing to do with the rest of the hero). Not to mention Earth Rend, which seems like you realized the hero needed some actual skill he can use (as all the others are *click* *done*), and decided to package every single thing an offensive skill can do into a relatively bland package.

My advice to you is as follows. Before you slap down skills, build a concept in your mind. Decide what you want the hero to do, and decide what you want it to look like while doing it. Once you've got this, start creating skills, one at a time, and after each skill you create, look back to the initial design of the hero, make sure the skill you just made fits it, and then ask yourself what skill you need to both compliment the previous one and to further complete the idea you have of the hero. Then, once all four skills are down, look back, and make sure every skill makes sense and fits with the others. It's alright to occasionally have one skill that doesn't interact with the others, but if ever you have more than that, you've got a serious problem on your hands.

For Example:
Role: Melee Crowd Control
Style: Tanking Tauren

Pride of the Warchief: For every enemy within 200 AoE, the Warchief gains X% cleave, to a max of Y%. Passive.
Indestructible: The Warchief takes X damage and gains a damage shield for the next Y seconds. The shield will absorb X+Z damage before breaking and dealing Z damage to all nearby units
Blood Brothers: For every unit within X AoE that has taken damage in the last Y seconds, the Warchief heals Z health/second. Passive.
Ultimate: Battle Cry: All enemies within X AoE have their attack damage reduced by Y% and are muted for Z seconds. Additionally, all enemies will be taunted to attack the Warchief.

Alright, maybe I didn't do a better job on the number of active or skill based skills, but the interaction seems alot better with this hero. Don't forget: there's never any reason to force a hero into multiple roles. If it can do one well, that's perfectly fine.

[light]

An all-rounder isn't exactly unnessesary, but a random all-arounder, now that is bad.

Remember too that we're in Warcraft III not in real life (as in the hero is) so your skills should not be restricted by the laws of physics!!! (Or we wouldn't have giant flying birds because they would just fall out from the sky due to their weight >>)

[doomhathcometh]

Err. Considering this game, 5 hp/sec is actually pretty good. It means while running to do quests, you would heal. However:

Survivalist: active (costs 100 mana, 20 cd). Increases HP regen by 10/20/30/40 per second for 10 seconds. Better?

Also, his ult has good synergy with his his other two abilities. His summons could be used while he is angry, and can also be used for (since some of em would be casters) to debuf enemies while they attempt to escape the earth shatter.

-Doom

[thedeathstalker]

I hate to disagree, but synergy isn't "I can use this skill when I can't do anything else", Summoning != synergy with Anger of the Chief. Here's a quick explanation of synergy...

Normally, when one adds 1 + 1, they get 2. This is how additive abilities such as Summoning and AotC work. Using AotC and the Ult gives you the ult, and it gives you AotC, but nothing more. While you may have a loose, loose point over debuffing summons helping Earth Rend, it's at most 1 + 1 = 2.1, real synergy you get some serious work going, 1+1=2^2, things like that. Take Pride of the Warchief and Blood Brothers for example... PotW grants cleave, which is nice, and Blood Brothers grants health regen, also nice. Combine the two, however, and you exponentially increase the health regen. Combo this with Indestructible and you now have health regen to replace the health you lose. Add onto that the ultimate, which forces units to attack you, but for reduced damage, and you now have a nearly unstoppable hero (not actually, but pretty threatening none the less). Each and every skill somehow builds upon another in a multiplicative way, THAT is synergy. What you have here is skills that, if forced, could possibly work together towards the same goal.

I don't mean to be rude, but that's the fact of the matter, the skills you have simply aren't synergy, they're just skills. Now, If you hold yourself to the low standard of Standard WC3 heroes, you may have a halfway acceptable hero here, but seeing as they came out 8 years ago, I'm sure you can do something better. Remember: Synergy is not additive, it's a whole greater than the sum of it's parts.

[doomhathcometh]

Aha! While that was an expertly worded argument, you forgot one thing:
Balance.

In game design, synergy is not 1+1 = 2^2. Is game design, synergy is x+y = z. Not x+y = x+y. Synergy is used to add additional ways in which an ability can be used. Abilities that simply stack to make one specific tactic work better are uninteresting an bad game design. True synergies allow for tactics that otherwise couldn't be done. This hero could primary melee take out a group of guys with nearly any one of your abilities. Adding them to each other increases his deadliness, but doesn't change it.

With my hero, anger of the chief has a completely different use once you get rally the troops. You can set the hero on auto-pilot and do all of your micro-ing with your secondary casters. They could even have an ability which directs him in a minor way. Survivalist also allows you to use anger of the chief to attack creeps, if done right.

I've made probably about 7 D&D classes. Abilities and spells with multi-placative synergies, that is they just increase the overall DPR or effect aren't actually that useful, and just end up breaking the game. Spells like reverse gravity and spike stones, two spells with completely different intended uses, together can make a really cool and effective direct damage spell. Thats the kind of thing that synergy should be used for. Only munchkins look for specific item/skill/spell/feat combos that make multiplacative synergy.

[thedeathstalker]

You know, it's up to you really, but I still hold that this hero lacks tangible or significant synergy, and from Light's comments, I'm guessing I'm not the only one that sees it that way. I'd debate this with you, but you seem rather set in the fact that you're right, and that this hero is as good as it gets. I'd argue that DnD is a completely different animal than this, and that I've never seen a single decent homebrewed PrC, but again, it would fall on deaf ears.

If you want help with the hero, let us know, otherwise just ask for the thread to be locked as soon as you post it, because we're apparently not helping...

[light]

DND is a turn-based game, am I correct?

If so, it is definately very different and cannot be compared.

doom, what you say is very logicial but that does not display strongly (enough) in your suggestion.

A role is very important to a hero, even if it has 2/3/4/5 roles that it does on varying levels of success, it-still-needs-(a)-role(s). A hero without a role is a fish out of water.

My suggestion is to give him a role/roles to play and develop those roles properly.

[doomhathcometh]

Yikes, death. Your comments are good, I just happen to disagree on paradigm. D&D, while being turn based (at least in combat) is still a good example. Heroes that have that have two passives an two activates that don't target, all of which are used in only one case (you run into a wave and use all of them) isn't that interesting to play. This hero can do a little bit of everything, but is primarily a pusher. He can wade into a melee and walk out again, but can also fight bosses.

-Doom