Hydrolisk wrote:When designing a Hero, it is almost always a bad idea to give the control of the outcome of something to the enemy.
The control is the players', how that control is exhibited is the enemies'. Remember that the player gets to choose which unit he guards, and so if cast on a hero, it is an instant spell of "suddenly, team!" versus one dude or whatever. Anyways, the counterattack power makes the ability more of a deterrent or a split-second cast before a condition application.
I agree that the enemy is certainly deciding when to inflict a condition, but it is not as though they can perform optimally by biding their time forever. Imagine in chess, if there were a penalty of losing 3 pieces to take the enemy's 1 piece. You wouldn't do that, would you? You'd only do it if it were a 1 to 1 trade (or better) and you're either taking an equally valued piece or a higher. It is not like, say, Innert's old spirit summoning skill. In that skill, the enemy lost nothing by just shooting the spirit at a range and yanking a lame Innert back for a cheap kill. In this case, in order to pull Hector back, you have to lose far more than he will. This is especially detrimental because the ability is powerful on short duration conditions. (3s condition being blocked is a 300% scaling, now imagine something like EoD's 10s cripple) The enemy will be guided by who has this buff, not the other way around, and that is always a fun thing to do.
Hydrolisk wrote:...although frustrating when it doesn't work.
Everything is frustrating when it doesn't work.
Hydrolisk wrote:I think that the ultimate sets itself up to be an ability rarely learned and upgraded.
The ability to set up a 900 damage counterattack spree on an enemy hero is something "rarely learned and upgraded"? Surely you jest. (Or maybe you don't and really haven't played DoE in years or something) When I say a variable X, it is going to be substantial enough that you'll want to learn it. It'll be a fun ult, it'll give the player control over what the enemy does and if they even try to do what they normally do, and it'd give the possibility for some serious counterattack sprees. (Cooldown is shorter than duration)