Hollow, The Last Breath Before Dying

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Kaome Sky Deathand
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Hollow, The Last Breath Before Dying

Post by Kaome Sky Deathand » Sat Oct 04, 2008 3:01 pm

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Hollow
LvL _ The Last Breath Before Dying

Primary: <Under Debate>
Model: <Under Query>
Side: Bane

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And now, all in my own dimension,
I stood on the shattered land.
The Dahaka stepped forth from his portal,
And scarcely he could stand.

I took my place before him.
The Dahaka crossed his brow.
"Say quick," quoth he, "I bid thee say;
What manner of man art thou?"

Forth within this frame of mine was wrenched,
A woeful agony.
It forced me to begin my song,
And then his soul slung free.

Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns.
Until my ghastly song is sung,
This heart within me burns.

I pass, like night, from land to land.
I have strange powers each.
The moment their last breath they breathe,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tune, I teach.
Rhyme of the Ancient Ravenor

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!: Hollow can't attack :!
Innate: Doom Reverb - Target enemy unit is cursed with 'Doom Reverb'
This skill does nothing directly.
Whenever a unit dies within range (?? Distance) of the marked unit, the marked unit will take X damage.

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Openings and Overtures

Icon of Dominance - Skill/AoE/Targeted
The foolish man will strike me, his demise thusly told:
For every sword he lant towards me; we strike him back ten-fold.

- All physical damage dealt to enemies in target area is increased by X%
This skill lasts Y seconds.

Twist of Fate - Activated Passive
Willingly you charged head-on, so eager to get into grips with your most coveted foe. You lack the care for tactical flair, you walk the path of dark Deaths row. Where is it you think you're going? Too much damage? You seek retreat? Humor you foolish hero...astound me with your feats...
- When activated Hollow will begin to lose mana.
Enemy Heroes cannot leave W radius from Hollow as long as he has X%, Y%, Z% Health.

Echoing Eulalie - Skill/Target Enemy/Extended Effect
When you turn, I will be gone, whispering my hidden song.
Then you see what cannot be, shadow moves where light should be...

Target Enemy unit.
That unit has X% of it's movement decreased for Y seconds.
If that unit should die under the effects of 'Echoing Eulalie' all nearby enemy units will suffer from the same affliction.
If one of those units should die under the effects of 'Echoing Eulalie' all nearby enemy units suffer the same affliction.
So forth and so on until a unit under the effects of 'Echoing Eulalie' recovers from the timer.
Units under the effect of 'Echoing Eulalie' cannot have 'Echoing Eulalie' cast on them.

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Signature Solo

Last Rites - Spell/Target Hero Corpse
I deliver you not unto Damnation, but into the Salvation you so rightly deserve...
Hollow is teleported to target corpse.
If Hero Corpse is Allied, reduce XXX by 3/6/9% and have 10% of its XXX replenished.
If Hero Corpse is Enemy, increase XXX by 3/6/9% and have 10% of its XXX given to Hollow.

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Fatal Finale

Last Breath Before Dying - Hero Effect Skill - Worldwide Range
I am the Anthem, Hollow be my name. My song be sung, your will...undone. ~ Spoken During Skill
Activate Skill: If target hero is under X% life, it takes its last breath and dies outright. Hollow is teleported to Heroes location and is invulnerable for Y seconds. Screen slowly phases out as Hollow whispers his Anthem (viewed on screen) and as Hollow ushers the Hero into the beyond. Enemy hero 'vanishes' (no body/counts as dead) and the ult is spent.

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Well, here he is.
Now, I suppose I should explain the obvious before he is thrown into the meat grinder.
He doesn't deal direct damage, because he obviously would not be able to lore wise. I wanted to create a unique character for the AotZ line that only portrayed a certain aspect. Here I tried to create a support class character that indeed, was nothing but support. After an extended and, most certainly, heated debate with Dusk, I was allowed to shed some light on certain aspects, I was however, not able to wrestle public detail on all and was firmly backhanded on extreme details. Thus, the XXX on a certain skill.
I realize the majority of people on the Internet will come to despise him.
I only ask for your fair opinions.

Round of Ammo for your thoughts?
Cruor Vult

Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion,
simultaneously the source of our greatest strength, and our greatest weakness.

Soon we shall be One...joined in the Word.

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Re: Hollow, The Anthem

Post by Rising_Dusk » Sun Oct 05, 2008 3:46 pm

Just unlock it when it's ready. That's all I'll say.
"I'll come to Florida one day and make you look like a damn princess." ~Hep

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Kaome Sky Deathand
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Re: Hollow, The Last Breath Before Dying

Post by Kaome Sky Deathand » Thu Oct 30, 2008 10:32 pm

I believe, as you say, he is ready.
Cruor Vult

Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion,
simultaneously the source of our greatest strength, and our greatest weakness.

Soon we shall be One...joined in the Word.

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Re: Hollow, The Last Breath Before Dying

Post by TheDeathstalker » Fri Oct 31, 2008 1:14 am

First of all, before I get to the hero itself, I've gotta say that the feel of the rest of it is amazing, albeit that may be because I keep seeing this guy around in threads, so either he's already a character in the storyline, or... well, there isn't really an or, but you get my point.

Now, for the hero itself. From what I've seen from every other submission that tried to stick to a guideline such as "all passive" or something like that, it's rough. That said, you've done better than all others I've seen (maybe it's that "no direct damage" is an easier thing to deal with, who knows). Let's start just looking at each skill individually.

Doom Reverb: Damage done when a unit dies within some radius. Simple, workable, and I'd assume like Greel it would increase in damage with every level, so I can see how this would be useful. Not much else to say about it other than if you're going non-direct damage, this is as good as I can think of for a attack replacement.

Icon of Dominance: Buffing damage to enemies in an area has the potential to be terrifyingly devastating, but I can't help but feel that there's just no umph to this skill. It seems like it would just be something tossed around because you've got the mana to help out, more than something used in some ingenious setup, but that may just be part of support. I'll come up with something useful to say eventually...

Catastrophe's Choir: I really have to say of all the skills, this is the one that strikes me as the least impressive. Yes this hero needs some means for defense, but I really don't think thorns aura does the trick. Let me brainstorm for a bit, and I'll think of something, but I really don't think a thorns aura (well, not even aura) has much of an allure in a game so skill heavy as AotZ.

Echoing Doubt: Now that's more like it. This skill pretty much keys into what this hero feels like he should be doing. It works (or moreso, compliments) the innate and supports heroes killing off creeps and heroes alike, for great effect. The only thing I would recommend is that the counter should refresh every time Echoing Doubt would be cast on a unit again, but maybe give it a shorter cooldown. This way it's much more momentum based, you have to keep killing to keep the slow. The way it is right now is that you cast it, have that unit be killed, then the skill's effect is basically over unless another enemy unit enters the equation (since the cooldown would end for all of the units hit by the first one's death at the same time). Also, this way it's use is kept as it is written, instead of being just used as a single target slow on heroes (as slowing spwans doesn't do all too much anyways).

Last Rites: I can't really comment too much on this without knowing what XXX is, although it's presence alone intrigues me. Although, from what I can gather, it's some sort of a buff gained from a hero corpse, which works, although it seems to be a bit lackluster, as most deaths would happen separate from Hollow, barring some oddity with the innate and a whole pile of units dying nearby or some luck with the slow. All in all, it may be a perfectly reasonable skill in the end, but without knowing what XXX is, I'll refrain from guesswork as to this.

Last Breath Before Dying: Ugh. Um... while cool, this skill is just nuts. Essentially what it will mean is that the moment you get full mana, an enemy hero dies. Either that, or suddenly nobody really feels like being risky, as once they hit X% health, they know they could just... die. This skill really needs some aspect of skill in it's use other than "point, click, dead". I know ultimates are meant to be insane in 3.00, but I still think some aspect of skill should be involved.

Thinking about it, I think that's the Achilles heel of this whole hero, all of the skills are fire and forget, the most skill that they require is picking the right target, but lacking any real interaction with the player past that point. I feel that every skill on a hero should draw the player in, immerse them more in the hero they are playing, but the skills here seem to be walking too fine a line to pull that off. If you're running a hero to be support based, he needs more than two skills that actually do so (well, two and an innate, but still, that's only half).

So, suggestions time. The primary goal of the hero is support, so in my mind he needs to have capacity in at least a few of the following areas: Healing, Damage Boost, Allied Protection, Enemy Debuff (damage, armor, movespeed, etc), Troop Production, Mobility Support, Trickery. Right now we've got Damage Boost and Enemy Debuff, but not much past that, which may be why this hero just doesn't have much to do. So, let's extend it a bit, but the question is into what? Well, seeing as Hollow's key weapon is going to be troops, I like some mix of Allied Protection and Healing.

Death March/Hymn(Toggled Passive):
Death March- Pushes nearby units to their limit, dealing X% damage per second. At the same time, with every attack, all adjacent allied units make an attack for Y% attack damage.
Death Hymn- Gives a reprieve to allied units, healing X% health per second. At the same time, for every unit adjacent to affected units, the unit gains Z armor.

Pah, that doesn't quite work, but something like that, work off of the fact that you're singing on a battlefield, amidst combat and all sorts of hell, and have the skills/songs be a means by which to control that. Again playing with the focus on units, Icon of Dominance could be made more interesting by simply making it cast on an allied unit, and for it's duration giving him an aura that does the same thing. This way you get more options, opening up the ability to either make an allied hero do phenomenal amounts of damage or to help push a wave. Ok, not too many more options, but hey, at least it's something. Hell, you could even make it so you could cast it on an enemy unit, causing allied units to attack it and deal the bonus damage.

Now for that Ultimate... hrm... how to spice it up so it isn't just a map wide teleport insta-kill. What about this:

Last Breath Before Dying - Hero Effect Skill - Worldwide Range
Activate Skill: If target hero is under X% life Hollow is teleported to Heroes location and is invulnerable for Y seconds. Screen slowly phases out as Hollow whispers his Anthem (viewed on screen) and as Hollow ushers the Hero into the beyond. During this, the enemy hero is confined to some small area (4-500?) and if it takes more than Z actions, the enemy hero 'vanishes' (no body/counts as dead) and the ult is spent.

Not perfect, but the idea is that at least it isn't an instant kill. In fact, this way, you basically leave the enemy a handful of options. One, stand there and wait (which, btw, no new player will do, all part of being new on a battlefield with powerful opponents I guess) while your allies potentially finish them off, or two, scramble for their lives in hopes that they can at least do something before you kill them.

Ok, I'm running out of things to say, hope this helps. I really want this hero to work out, it seems so cool, but it really needs some life to it, so hopefully I've helped with that some. Good Luck.
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.

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Re: Hollow, The Last Breath Before Dying

Post by Loki » Fri Oct 31, 2008 7:23 am

Last Breath Before Dying: Ugh. Um... while cool, this skill is just nuts. Essentially what it will mean is that the moment you get full mana, an enemy hero dies. Either that, or suddenly nobody really feels like being risky, as once they hit X% health, they know they could just... die. This skill really needs some aspect of skill in it's use other than "point, click, dead". I know ultimates are meant to be insane in 3.00, but I still think some aspect of skill should be involved.

Thinking about it, I think that's the Achilles heel of this whole hero, all of the skills are fire and forget, the most skill that they require is picking the right target, but lacking any real interaction with the player past that point. I feel that every skill on a hero should draw the player in, immerse them more in the hero they are playing, but the skills here seem to be walking too fine a line to pull that off. If you're running a hero to be support based, he needs more than two skills that actually do so (well, two and an innate, but still, that's only half).
All ultimates in AotZ 3.XX are insane. This one fits into the rest of them.
Let's do what comes naturally
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Re: Hollow, The Last Breath Before Dying

Post by Rising_Dusk » Fri Oct 31, 2008 8:44 am

The idea and final beauty behind the ultimate is that it's a click-shoot instant kill that is done in a special way, making it feel frickin' awesome. That's exactly how all skills should be for AotZ, simple mechanics with deep visual effects. Just look at Celestial Ascension.
TheDeathStalker wrote:Ugh. Um... while cool, this skill is just nuts. Essentially what it will mean is that the moment you get full mana, an enemy hero dies. Either that, or suddenly nobody really feels like being risky, as once they hit X% health, they know they could just... die. This skill really needs some aspect of skill in it's use other than "point, click, dead". I know ultimates are meant to be insane in 3.00, but I still think some aspect of skill should be involved.
This skill should not be missable. If it were, it'd be lackluster, and the awesome part about it is that it casts aside a weaker enemy of the crowd. In AotZ 3.00, ultimates are not something that reload every 120 seconds, they reload when you can fuel them with mana, which is quite infrequently. That said, something like this pretty much defined a hero, giving it that final fatal oomph to take it from "Okay" to "Freakin' Frightening." It's just so direct, so blatant, it's such a great diversion from the hero itself, and the visuals that Kao and I thought up were so beautiful it practically made me accept it on the spot. Granted, Hollow is quite possibly the coolest hero ever made for other, lore-driven reasons, but that's beside the point.
TheDeathStalker wrote:Echoing Doubt: Now that's more like it. This skill pretty much keys into what this hero feels like he should be doing. It works (or moreso, compliments) the innate and supports heroes killing off creeps and heroes alike, for great effect. The only thing I would recommend is that the counter should refresh every time Echoing Doubt would be cast on a unit again, but maybe give it a shorter cooldown. This way it's much more momentum based, you have to keep killing to keep the slow. The way it is right now is that you cast it, have that unit be killed, then the skill's effect is basically over unless another enemy unit enters the equation (since the cooldown would end for all of the units hit by the first one's death at the same time). Also, this way it's use is kept as it is written, instead of being just used as a single target slow on heroes (as slowing spwans doesn't do all too much anyways).
I agree with his point about the recast. It doesn't complicate the skill, and it anything allows it to be more useful. Go for it.
TheDeathStalker wrote:Thinking about it, I think that's the Achilles heel of this whole hero, all of the skills are fire and forget, the most skill that they require is picking the right target, but lacking any real interaction with the player past that point. I feel that every skill on a hero should draw the player in, immerse them more in the hero they are playing, but the skills here seem to be walking too fine a line to pull that off. If you're running a hero to be support based, he needs more than two skills that actually do so (well, two and an innate, but still, that's only half).
In the case of the first skill, it's updating the target to be the mastermind of his own demise. With the innate not having a cooldown, but limiting it to only being active on one enemy unit at a time, you can see how it might become spammy and very, very tricky to use correctly. You want to bounce it around, essentially locking people between the damage they'd take and the slow they'd get from Echoing Doubt. It would be a subtle mind game, which would be a refreshing contrast with, say, Scamp, who is a quite blatant and direct mindf*ck.
"I'll come to Florida one day and make you look like a damn princess." ~Hep

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Re: Hollow, The Last Breath Before Dying

Post by assassingao » Fri Oct 31, 2008 10:04 am

This hero suggestion just made Kaome my new idol.

Yes, seriously. It's f**king awesome as hell. It gets full personality, lore and stuff, yet still functions wonderfully to the role.

Epic is the word.

/me worships Kaome.

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Re: Hollow, The Last Breath Before Dying

Post by LightburneR » Fri Oct 31, 2008 11:18 am

I love heros that play around with Creeps. While the feeling of chasing a hero or staring down 2-3 heros in battle can be cool. I just get this epic feeling of playing with a hero such as Arro Kree or Scamp solely because of their ablilty to manipulate creeps.

His entire skillset is just perfect, well except for one (for me), with Doom Reverb/Echoing Doubt centered on creeps and while Icon of Dominace can soften enemies for hero attacks, it can (and should be more effective) be used to "buff up" the damage of creeps.

Catastrophe's Choir is basically what hit me to be out of place. I agree with Death that it seems a little... well... not quite flashy enough. I mean getting a % chance to throw damage back is good, but, not quite.

Perhaps something flash-ier yet mantaining the original feel of the ablilty.

Hallowed Barrier

Creates a Barrier with X health at the target area. Spells and attacks will bounce off the barrier (whether it comes from within or without) back to their original casters/attackers.

Well, not too sure, but it does add to the support (It's a barrier?) and it is rather easy to get around (blasting someone in the barrier is as easy as waltzing in to fire), but makes movement rather inconvient. But yea, erm.....
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Re: Hollow, The Last Breath Before Dying

Post by TheDeathstalker » Fri Oct 31, 2008 1:36 pm

Rising_Dusk wrote:In the case of the first skill, it's updating the target to be the mastermind of his own demise. With the innate not having a cooldown, but limiting it to only being active on one enemy unit at a time, you can see how it might become spammy and very, very tricky to use correctly. You want to bounce it around, essentially locking people between the damage they'd take and the slow they'd get from Echoing Doubt. It would be a subtle mind game, which would be a refreshing contrast with, say, Scamp, who is a quite blatant and direct mindf*ck.
Oh, ok, I can see it better now, for some reason I was just seeing it as having a cooldown like Greel's skill, which would leave you with a long time spent just waiting around, but the lack of cooldown allows a good bit more messing around with things.

Also, on the ult... I guess I've just been underestimating just how powerful these things are meant to be... damn...
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.

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Kaome Sky Deathand
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Re: Hollow, The Last Breath Before Dying

Post by Kaome Sky Deathand » Fri Oct 31, 2008 10:55 pm

Currently updating skill set.

UPDATE 10/31/08
-Fixed a slight error in 'Last Rites' (Removed 'Max')
Cruor Vult

Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion,
simultaneously the source of our greatest strength, and our greatest weakness.

Soon we shall be One...joined in the Word.

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Re: Hollow, The Last Breath Before Dying

Post by Phox » Sat Nov 01, 2008 4:11 am

I'm not really sure what Last Rites does... What does XXX mean?

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Re: Hollow, The Last Breath Before Dying

Post by Daryll-The-Damned » Sat Nov 01, 2008 9:14 am

Read the stuff at the bottom man...He can't tell us yet.
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Re: Hollow, The Last Breath Before Dying

Post by Phox » Sat Nov 01, 2008 4:19 pm

Daryll-The-Damned wrote:Read the stuff at the bottom man...He can't tell us yet.
Weaksauce. Okay, the hero still looks pretty cool.

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Re: Hollow, The Last Breath Before Dying

Post by TheIrishPatriot » Sat Nov 01, 2008 5:19 pm

I think the model should be the shade from the Undead, the scout thing. I think it's definitely a cool hero, but I really dislike the ultimate. It's epic and cool and all, but it's basically an Ultimate Storm Bolt.
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Re: Hollow, The Last Breath Before Dying

Post by Rising_Dusk » Sat Nov 01, 2008 5:27 pm

TheIrishPatriot wrote:but it's basically an Ultimate Storm Bolt.
That really doesn't make it any less awesome. Besides, with how infrequent ultimates are used, they're allowed to be totally imbalanced. That's sort of the point.
"I'll come to Florida one day and make you look like a damn princess." ~Hep

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