Grast, the Great Progenitor

[TheDeathstalker]

Grast
Great Progenitor
Strength; Bane.

Story: Coming eventually

Level 1 Skill:
Regenesis

• Passive
  For every condition on Grast or his clones, they gain hp regen equal to X.

Level 1 Skill:
Hunger

• Passive
  On attack, has X% chance to transfer Y seconds of all conditions and Z health per second of conditions off of target unit and onto Grast.

Level 1 Skill:
Primordial Miasma

• Passive
  Any enemies within some AoE (300-400?) have X% chance to have cripple extended for Y seconds. Stacks with itself.

Level 6 Ultimate:
Progeny

• Activated Passive
  Debuffs attacked unit for X seconds. If that unit dies under the effects of the debuff, a clone of Grast is spawned. Grast's current health is halved and the clone is given that much health. Clones last until killed, and have a max total health of Y*(Max health of Grast) (Grast's health is included in this max health).

Comments:
1) Ok, first off, I'm not really happy with this hero as it stands. I know it's weird for me to post a hero that I'm not happy with, but I feel there's some potential to the concept, I just can't seem to refine it.
2) The idea behind the hero is a low hp tank, that tanks by the sole fact that there's so many of it with a potentially high regen. The Survivability is in Regenesis, Hunger and Progeny, while the threat is through Progeny and Primordial Miasma (god i hate that name... and the skill as a whole), and to a lesser extent, Hunger. The skill would come in with the fact that you *could* have infinite spawns, but at that same time you'd have only a certain max hp for all of them, so if you stretch too far, you'll end up getting flattened by an AoE spell, something the Order is pretty good at. So in order to use this hero effectively, you'd have to work with the number of spawns to ensure that you won't get flattened.
3) Again, it is worth noting that Grast would have relatively low HP for a tank, but by sheer numbers and regen would be able to do the requisite tanking.
4) Most of the skills are fairly straight forward, and it's by sheer accident they ended up as passives, but I guess it works, since otherwise the spawns would require ungodly micro. The one skill I want to clarify is Progeny itself, say Grast has 600 max hp, Y is 4, and he has 5 spawns. That means that on average each would have (600*4)/(5+1)=400 hp, which is frighteningly low. This would be offset by the fact that if some die, they're replaceable, and if say you get hit with trebs, you now have 2*5*(the X in Regenesis), which could be enough to bring you back to full fairly quick. Something that occurred to me is that if you were to make a clone and have it sit back somewhere back in your base, you could in theory never die. This could be offset by declaring one Grast the "original" (which would change to a new one every time the "original" dies), that all the others must stay near to, or begin decaying at something like 10% max health/second. In this way you keep Grast and his horde together and prevent any cheap tricks where you've say got one in each lane or something.
5) Again, I'm not very happy with Grast as he is now, but have run out of ideas to make him work better, so I'm submitting him so that he may be rent asunder by you and hopefully put back together into something brilliant.

[Greenspawn]

Interesting concept. Basically, your purpose is to have many clones out at once to maximize the regen.

Your ultimate doesn't make sense as an active passive since you have a "target unit" in the description.

Suggestions:

Instead of increasing health regeneration for each condition, maybe make it be health gained (i.e. whenever Grast or one of his clones receives a condition, they regain X health). This makes it easier to regain lots of health in a short period of time, given your hero setup.

I assume for Primordial Miasma you want condition application to occur every few seconds. If Grast and his clones had this ability firing, then you'd have many more conditions to utilize.

For Hunger, I think you ought to make it apply some condition, once you take the attacked unit's conditions, so that it could (possibly) trigger immediately after.

[LightburneR]

Hm, there is only one really, really, really, major flaw within this hero.

If you die once, you're probably going to die multiple times again and quickly, unless I mistook the ultimate and clones could use it too, then the reverse would be true and he would multiply too quickly which is somewhat a problem......

That was the main killer for this hero, at least for me. If I could rapidly multiply, it wouldn't be any fun tabbing through all my clones to throw out parasites of myself into creeps and watch my opponents get deciminated at incredible rates. Neither is dying once and having a hero that has to waste 10minutes after death to become more powerful again.

Also, I think he should have at least 1 active (I don't think it's fun watching a ton of yourselves murder the enemy, while you scramble to move them in and out of combat) which makes him slightly more interactive, without overforcing the player to rely on the "ungodly micro skills" which he probably doesn't have. While the entire set of passives was purely incidental, he should still have at least an active, which gives the player a sense of control over his hero, I mean too much luck is a bad thing right?

[TheDeathstalker]

Interesting concept. Basically, your purpose is to have many clones out at once to maximize the regen.

Your ultimate doesn't make sense as an active passive since you have a "target unit" in the description.

Heh, good catch, the "target unit" was a typo, it's an on attack debuff. Also, the purpose is to find a balance between regen and max health. Yes, if you have 100 spawns, each with on condition, you'll have some serious regen, but at the same time, they'll have horribly low health, and could just be swatted away without much effort. For such a reason, the clone creating skill is an activated passive, something you can turn on or off depending on if you're happy with your horde size or not.

I know that while the spikes of healing would work better, it would kill the feel of the hero, and remove it's key weakness (which isn't as much a "weakness" as a controlling factor), the fact that you can kill it with spikes of damage especially if they spread out the health too much. It's for this reason I went with regen so that a passive mass conditioning will never kill them off, but a direct assault could.

For the Miasma, yeah, the point is for it to stack, giving you conditions to play with.

Something I'm not sure I was clear about is the clones are literally clones, they've got all the same skills as Grast, so they've got the regen, they've got the condition/health steal, they've got the Miasma, and most importantly, they've got the ability to use Progeny.

For Hunger, yeah, I considered having it add a condition, but I'm not sure. It feels as if any condition other than bleed wouldn't really fit, and at the same time, I just... feel adding anything to hunger would be just tacked on... I dunno, I'll leave it up to more feedback, see if anyone can argue either for or against it.

Oh, and LightburneR, no need to worry about the taking too long to rebuild your horde thing. Yes, if you die, you won't be instantly at full capacity, but if you've ever played a Zombie map, you can build a horde pretty quick so long as you aren't stupid. Granted, if you're facing a hero killer in every lane, you may be in trouble, but you may just have to get a bit of help from an ally to just get the first couple, then you'll be fine.

That was the main killer for this hero, at least for me. If I could rapidly multiply, it wouldn't be any fun tabbing through all my clones to throw out parasites of myself into creeps and watch my opponents get deciminated at incredible rates. Neither is dying once and having a hero that has to waste 10minutes after death to become more powerful again.

Also, I think he should have at least 1 active (I don't think it's fun watching a ton of yourselves murder the enemy, while you scramble to move them in and out of combat) which makes him slightly more interactive, without overforcing the player to rely on the "ungodly micro skills" which he probably doesn't have. While the entire set of passives was purely incidental, he should still have at least an active, which gives the player a sense of control over his hero, I mean too much luck is a bad thing right?

Couple points here. For the first bit, it's a activated passive, so all you've gotta do is toggle it on or off, so there isn't that much tabbing through clones, you just turn it on when you need more, off when you're done. Also, for the active bit. If you can think of a good active skill for this guy, then by all means. But I was trying to think, and there's not really any place to put an active skill, at least not that I can find. I mean, thinking about it, even if there was one decent active skill to put on this guy, a hero with one active skill doesn't seem workable, as either it'd be manaless, or mana wouldn't really matter anyways since you have a single skill draining it.

However, I am still looking for either a sudden revelation that Primordial Miasma works really well, or a better idea for a skill. Thanks for the help guys, if you have any more ideas, lemme know.

[LightburneR]

I mis-understood his ultimate then, ignore that.

Perhaps he has an active channeling ablilty that targets one of his clones and both will be unable to move (target and caster) and for the duration of the spell, a wall is formed? Erm, then again maybe not =/, would be somewhat too much micro.

[VZManticoran]

Seems fairly effective. But a major problem I can see is that people are going to gain massive amounts of experience fighting this hero. You'd have to do something like have the miniatures not give experience, and have the major only give experience if it's the last one.

The aura seems... bad. Either it'll trigger too often, and so be incredibly imbalanced when you have a bunch of them, or not trigger enough, ONLY be at all useful when you have a bunch, and so fail as a skill. Could I just recommend some kind of spell where you click and it fires in front-of/around the hero, so it doesn't require much micro, but gets rid of the infinite cripple problem? Perhaps a low damage spell that extends Cripple for 2 seconds in an around around it. Not very useful, but still is, in low numbers, but at high numbers it can be devastating, especially if you get the cripple higher than the cooldown on the spell.

If we go by main unit, as a question for the healing spell, do conditions on one of them heal all of them? Or the main one, anyway? Because that's the only way I can see it working. Have each one give something like even 1/2/3/4/5 hp/sec regen, and that number can climb REALLY high, if you have a silly AK or something that flashes a Firewall, and you've got 6 out. 30 hp/sec with 6 clones, 180 hp/sec heal is nothing to laugh at in the slightest.

Hunger also needs changing. It's just not a very good skill. You'd have to do something like gain MASSIVE amounts of life, like 5/10/15/20/25 per condition per second, otherwise it's a "Damn, I can't attack the enemy or I could get maimed or blinded or crippled, which completely negates any ability my hero has to do ANYTHING! Fun!" I can't think of a way to make removing conditions from the enemy work in a non-explosive way, but having something like an X% chance to extend... Oh, Bleed, Burn, or Mute... Oh! Idea! Ok, skills...

Level 1 Skill - Blahblahblah

• Passive. Heals X(Small) hp to all copies and the hero per condition on each copy and the hero.

Level 1 Skill - BlahdyBlahdyBlahdy

• Deals slight damage around self, and extends Mute for 2 seconds. Moderate-long cooldown.

Level 1 Skill - SowhatIcan'tthinkofgoodnames

• Passive/Active, hp drain. 25% chance on attack to extend Cripple to self and enemy for Y(Small) seconds

Ultimate I think needs to be something less related to killing enemy units, and perhaps enemy heroes. Not sure. A spell like Victor's ressurection, but spawns a copy? It's harder to get, so lets you remove the silly math for the maximum health. Just give him slightly over 1000 health at max, the Mute/Cripple combo makes it hard enough to kill him if he's paying attention as it is. High agility and moderate intelligence, make damage intelligence based, that way pumping strength items isn't as useful as it could be otherwise. Gives reason for the heroes actually being replaceable, since they're harder to get, but means you also can't just suicide them. Remove the silly distance restrictions, and it SHOULD balance out. Sure, you can keep one of them in back... If you can afford to.
Meh, bad idea, makes it too hard to deal with the irreplaceable-ness of the heroes. A passive ultimate that just gives you multiple heroes would work, but that's already implemented in DotA, and we don't want them yelling at us about stealing hero spells.

Anyway, way the hero works... Ultimate making copies not sure exactly how yet...
Some active play is made, but because you're using so many copies, major micromanagement is... Not gonna happen. All you have is a quick spell that activates and you move on to the next hero, and click-attack. Not sure if the aura and the % attack shouldn't be swapped on what condition they inflict.

[TheDeathstalker]

Ok, sorry it's taken so long to get back on this, last week was tough with tests and projects, but that's finally done, so... here goes.

First, with the experience thing, I agree. The hero is the mass of them, so you should get the experience for a hero kill for killing the mass, maybe split up a bit into the clones, but the net should be the same.

For the regen, I feel it should be applied to all copies and the hero for all conditions on each copy and the hero (just as you wrote in your sugguestion). For the other skills, I agree, they just don't... work. I'm not sure about the mute, as I almost think that the lack of spells would hurt this hero, as it means fewer conditions, but the ideas are interesting, here goes:

Level 1 Skill:
Bloody Burst

• Active
  Damages Grast for X% of his current health and deals that damage to enemies in a moderate/small AoE, extending bleed for Grast and affected enemies by Y seconds. If a clone is within the radius and the skill is not on cooldown, they use this skill as well.

Level 1 Skill:
Hunger

• Activated passive
  While active, drains health over time, but gives X% chance to extend cripple for Y seconds on both Grast and the an attacked unit.

Level 6 Ultimate:
Mitosis

• Passive (or activated passive)
  Whenever Grast has full health, he "splits", creating a clone of himself with 50% health, while also reducing his health to 50%. Can have a maximum of X clones. If the main Grast dies, and there is a clone within some radius, that clone then becomes the "main". If no clone is within that radius, Grast and all his clones die.

Basically making the hero more active while keeping micro to a minimum (theoretically all the activated passives could be globally triggered, if one has it active, they all do). I'm not sure how well it would work, but I almost think this hero would work best if health is used as a resource, as you've got the regen to keep health up, which is fueled by the second and third skill, as well as any other conditions that are applied. Meanwhile the second and third skills make use of health, and the ultimate is triggered by it. It still needs work, so I'm not gonna change the first post just yet, so any feedback would be much appreciated.

[VZManticoran]

Uh, looks good... But the chain-reaction just seems kind of... Crazy. With each one being able to use this, you could easily hit over 20 times with it in a short time. If you have a maximum of like 2/4/6 copies, then you've got the problem where you can get 9/25/49 hits with it, if you're surrounding them. If it did something like extending Bleed and Burn, it'd work, though. If they let themselves get surrounded, then 30 dps for the next... Oh, say it extends for 1/2/3/4/5 seconds, for the next minute or two, isn't nearly as bad. Plus, if you're against someone like Mr. Prevailing Winds, you could easily blow yourself into very small bits very quickly, even if you do kill him via long-term dps. I just don't see the chain-reaction working, it's fine as it is just having it extend in area. Then you've only got a maximum of... Oh... 270 dmg over 9 seconds at level 6, 750 dmg over 25 seconds at level 12, and 1050 dmg over 35 seconds at level 18. Assuming you somehow manage to completely surround them.

Maybe making Hunger just a passive chance to deal % extra damage and extend cripple to target and self on attacks? It occurs to me activating on so many copies could be really really annoying for the people who don't use hotkeys and the Tab key.

[TheDeathstalker]

Well, the chain is meant to reduce macro, not cause an infinite loop, so say you have 5 clones next to Grast, you trigger it with one of them, then it fires for the others, for a total of six firings, instead of 36, as it would trigger the actual use of the skill, which has a cooldown. In this way, it's a high spike of damage, but not insane.

As for hunger... you may be right, I think I just was too excited by the potential use of health as a resource and the hp drain thing... but I think a pure passive "critical strike" like crippling thing may work too... ugh, I dunno...

[LightburneR]

Unless there happens to be a limit on his ultimate, then I can potientially see Fountain Campers.... and multiplying heros.

[VZManticoran]

Of course there's a limit... But you're right, in that the Fountain could be a problem with massive amounts of replication, except that there's the fact you'd have to spend about a minute just sitting at the fountain to get all 2/4/6 of them. Or maybe 1/3/5. Something like that.

And my point for the Burst spell was that what you're doing is... Making the smaller versions less like the actual hero. Which I didn't think was the point. I was under the idea that the point was for each version to be just as powerful as the main, interchangeable. Which leads us to the point that you can't have one skill on the main that simply activates the rest of them. I wasn't looking at infinate loops, but the fact that if each one has this and it chains, than you can hit with it a number equal to ((Number of copies)+1)^2 times. Which gives you 9/25/49 hits with it. Of course, I like the idea of a chaining spell, it makes them being close to each other VERY important, which emphasizes the semi-swarm mechanic you have. But perhaps a better way to do that is to have it do...

Level 1 Skill - Blahblahburstblah

• Causes Y damage and extends (condition) for Z seconds to self and nearby enemies, and deals an additional X damage and extends (samecondition) for W seconds for each nearby Grast.