Post
by TheDeathstalker » Sun Oct 19, 2008 12:03 am
Ok, let's start us off with the basics of a tank. Threat and Survivability. You have to make the tank worthwhile to be attacked while at the same time making him able to take the punishment. So let's see how these apply to the hero.
Threats:
Crusher
Intimidate
(somewhat) Form of the Mountain
Crusher both damages and ruins, meaning if you hit them any more than once with it, you can cause some serious hurting, so that's a good threat there, however it has little help from anything else. Everyone hates Maim, so Intimidate is good, although it may just be a "keep away from him and let casters deal with it instead of melee", which would defeat the purpose of threat. Form of the Mountain gives him additional damage, which is nice, but again I think the Threat is too focused around melee units, and that rangers and casters would have no problem with this hero, while melee units would be at too great a disadvantage to bother.
Survivability:
Form of the Mountain (somewhat)
Mountain's Guard.
Intimidate
Ok, so Form of the Mountain adds health, which is useful to keep you alive until you use your ult, which is (somewhat) powered by Form of the Mountain. That's good, that makes him a threat more than for just 10 seconds every minute. Intimidate again boosts his survivability, as noted above. The main problem with this hero is that he's either gonna be killed or untouchable, so maybe Mountain's Guard is too much.
Now for the sugguestions:
Crusher: For some inexplicable reason, I love this skill. Yes, it's basic, simple, meh on the surface, but if you jazz it up just a smidge it becomes something fun and cool. Say when the boulder is summoned it is litterally just created right there in front of him, then begins rolling forward faster and faster (potentially with a curve left or right towards a targeted unit?). Either way, this makes it so a melee unit hitting you is gonna be in trouble in a big way, and a ranged unit will have to reconsider standing there and giving you a beating to avoid the huge-ass rock rolling their way. In this way, you've got a threat, and a big one at that. Whenever you're near, they have to stay on their toes or risk pain (again, the first one would sting, but any subsequent ones would be devastating due to the ruin). Despite my normal issues with what I'm about to say, I believe this skill works all by itself, and actually needs very little in the way of synergies, and that the rest of the hero should be spent in such a way as to flesh out what this doesn't do for him.
Form of the Mountain: Key early game for survival and melee threat. It has key weaknesses against ranged units and casters as your damage isn't gonna do much for you there, and while the extra health is nice, if you're unable to do anything about units that far out, you're gonna lose it fast. Yes, Crusher will do a lot to alleviate ranged pressure, but it can't do everything. So let's leave finishing this one up for later.
Intimidate: I know you're still working on making something work for this slot, but I don't think this is it. Again, I would like to put this skill off til after the Ultimate
Mountain's Guard: Serious stuff here dude... this is some serious stuff. Potentially 7X seconds of perfect tanking. Sadly, I feel this to be potentially too much. Being invulnerable for that long would allow you to just walk into a base and sit there wailing on a tower, ignoring anything and everything around you, which would be troublesome. However, there is a solution. What if, instead of having it be an active spell, it were a passive? Every time you are inflicted with a condition, you gain X (short) seconds of invulnerability, triggering a max of once every Y seconds per condition (as to prevent uber cheese from self conditioning items)? Having this would allow you to actively tank against foes the whole time, instead of having spiking tanking abilities.
Back to Form of the Mountain... Since we have an ult that triggers off of conditions, self conditioning is a good thing, but self ruin is odd, especially for a tank. Hows about this as a moderate duration, moderate cooldown spell that does the following:
Form of the Mountain: Cripples Geodus for the duration and causes all attacks against him to trigger a counter attack for X% of Geodus' damage. This counter is in the form of a shockwave through the ground, damaging the attacking unit and any unit struck by the shockwave as it travels.
Not bad, eh? With this you have a solution to ranged attacks AND another means to tear through melee units. Yes, you're crippled, and thus slow, but who cares, ranged units are getting attacked by you anyways, so there's no real loss here.
Back to Intimidate... Um... ok, back to what are we missing... We have a decent solution to ranged units, and a great solution to melee units, but very little for casters (as I'd assume we'd apply the invincibility from the ult after a spell hits, otherwise he might as well be spell immune). So we need this spell to do two things, first to work primarily against casters and second to self condition. Since knockdown would be too sweet a setup for Crusher, that's off the table (shame too), and we've already got cripple and ruin, so what else can we play with... Mute would be nice, but no real means to do so with rocks. Blind isn't any good against casters... meh... Ok, i'm going back on my word, it's time for a Crusher set up (I have no other ideas).
Mountain's Eyes(Activated Passive):
Blinds Geodus so long as this is active. Whenever an ability is used within R radius of Geodus, he is healed X if it is an ally and if it is an enemy they are damaged by Y and Crippled for Z seconds.
Essentially this is him using the earth as a guide to siphon off some of the energy of a spell, healing himself if it is an ally, or causing the earth to shoot up and cripple them if they are an enemy. It's not the best skill in the world, and hopefully someone else can think of something, but it's all I've got.
Hope this helps!
And though you come out of each gruelling bout,
All broken and beaten and scarred,
Just have one more try—it’s dead easy to die,
It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.
