[REMAKE + TEST MAP] Visage

[Heelz]

Changelog:

12/13/09 - Remake posted
12/16/09 - Animations for Soul Swarm, Soul Assumption, and Discharge Souls
12/17/09 - Posted first version of test map
12/18/09 - Updated Soul Swarm and Grave Chill icons
Rebalanced Grave Chill: 2/4/6/8 -> 3/6/9/12 drain per attack, 6 stacks -> 5
12/19/09 - Updated Grave Chill and Discharge Souls icons

Since Icefrog himself has asked the community for ideas in remaking Visage, I thought I'd post my remake of Visage here.

Visage is a pretty interesting concept in that he's a carry int hero. The interesting part pretty much stops there as he's one of the most passive heroes in the game. He has two passives, a fire-and-forget spell, and an ultimate that doesn't do much when cast.

My remake seeks to preserve the unique aspect Visage has of being a strong DPSing int hero with healing abilities, while making him much more active and fun to play.

Current Visage

New Visage



Str: 17 + 1.75 -> 17 + 1.75
Agi: 17 + 2 -> 17 + 1.7
Int: 19 + 2.45 -> 19 + 2.8

Movespeed: 285 -> 290


Soul Swarm

Visage releases a swarm of ravenous souls, each dealing 15 damage to a random enemy in range. The souls then return to Visage, healing him for the damage dealt.

Level 1 - 5 souls
Level 2 - 10 souls
Level 3 - 15 souls
Level 4 - 20 souls

Mana cost: 125
Cooldown: 20
AoE: 350

-The same target can be damaged by multiple souls.







Gravekeeper's Cloak

Surrounds target ally with a protective cloak that absorbs half of the damage dealt to it and heals nearby allies for the amount absorbed.

Level 1 - Absorbs 100 damage
Level 2 - Absorbs 125 damage
Level 3 - Absorbs 150 damage
Level 4 - Absorbs 175 damage

Mana cost: 100/115/130/145
Cooldown: 16/14/12/10


Grave Chill

Whenever Visage attacks an enemy, he drains its power, stealing its movement and attack speeds. Each successive hit drains more and more power up to a maximum of 5 bonuses.

Level 1 - 3% speed drained per hit, 15% maximum
Level 2 - 6% speed drained per hit, 30% maximum
Level 3 - 9% speed drained per hit, 45% maximum
Level 4 - 12% speed drained per hit, 60% maximum

Duration: 2 seconds

-Buff placer


Soul Assumption

Whenever an enemy unit dies near Visage, he uses its soul to create a flying revenant. Each revenant gives Visage 6 bonus damage, and can be sacrificed to heal nearby allies and damage nearby enemies. Revenants are uncontrollable and fly around Visage attacking his enemies.

Level 1 - maximum of 6 revenants
Level 2 - maximum of 9 revenants
Level 3 - maximum of 12 revenants



Subskill:

Discharge Souls

Sacrifices all your revenants, healing nearby allies for 20 and damaging nearby enemies for 40 per revenant

Mana cost: 150
Cooldown: 30
Damage type: magic

-Damage is dealt before revenants are destroyed, so units killed by Discharge Souls will not create new revenants.



Notes:

So that looks like a lot more fun to play, right? Visage retains his high damage through his ultimate, which creates permanent, uncontrollable revenants that circle around him, dealing minor damage. His bonus damage is now more reliable, though slightly less than the current Soul Assumption. Additionally, he can sacrifice his revenants to heal allies and damage enemies, but losing his bonus damage until more enemy creeps die.

His Grave Chill is also a passive buffplacer now. It starts out weak but becomes greater for each successive hit on the same enemy. It eventually caps out at 48% slow for your enemy while giving you a boost of 48% in movement and attack speed!

Gravekeeper's Cloak has been changed to an active spell. It is similar to Abaddon's Aphotic Shield, except it only blocks half the damage and gives its heal throughout the duration instead of when it ends. This spell has many uses. During laning, you can heal yourself by using it on a creep. It can help pushes by giving an AoE heal every 10~ seconds. Finally, it essentially gives you or an ally an extra 175 health.

Due to Visage's loss of passive Gravekeeper's Cloak, he's a bit more fragile. And since he needs to keep attacking to gain speed bonuses, he can't retreat as well. Soul Swarm helps to make Visage less squishy by giving him a reliable self-heal. However, it also gives him a powerful situational nuke! When surrounded by units, it'll heal him fully, but it won't deal much damage to any single unit. But if he catches an enemy alone, he'll receive the same heal and it'll concentrate the damage on that poor unit!

Comments? Suggestions? Thanks for your time.

[xy4kuz4x]

Soul Swarm - kinda soul rip to ownself.

Cloak - null, but i think current is better.

Chill - i need more explanation. I don't want to embarass myself

assumption + subskill - just like monk's skill in Ragnarok.

I don't like if his role changed

[nog]

I think it's a cool suggestion. Not perfect, but what is?

1st skill: Good idea, but too defensive. Let's say you're up against an enemy hero at level 7, with this skill on level 4, and there are 4 enemy creeps there. The enemy hero will get on average 60 damage if all the creeps are close to you. That isn't too much. I like the idea, but I wish this skill was more aggressive.
2nd skill: Interesting skill, but reminds me a lot of Abaddon's shield, which makes it too much of a support skill?
3rd skill: Wait a second, another skill like one of Abaddon's? Frostmourne? More aggressive, though, and will be easier to use on Visage which is a ranged hero.
Ulti: Can the revenants be killed? Do they give gold when they get killed? Other than that I think it's pretty good. The idea of losing attack damage for using a skill isn't too tempting, though.

[DarkWatcher]

New grave chill is good, although 2 seconds is to less, 3 or 4 is better.
I think Discharge souls is a bit to weak too.
Are revenants invulnerable? And how does discharge damage work? (aoe around each revenant, or bigger aoe around visage)
Gravekeeper's Cloak is a bit strange, if it heals also heals the target hero, then he doesn't lose health as long the shield is up.
There isn't also any synergy between his skills. I think you have to work it out a little further.

[Heelz]

Soul Swarm is primarily defensive because Visage loses tankiness by not having a passive Gravekeeper's. It's meant to be a weak damage dealer when creeps are around, but it's very strong if you can hit one unit. Notice the AoE is pretty small so even if creeps are around, you can still position yourself so only your desired target is in it.

Gravekeeper's Cloak basically gives a target 50% damage reduction (because it heals half the damage on the target) and heals the area.

I thought about the Grave Chill duration. Two seconds seems balanced because Visage is ranged and after a few hits he'll be attacking pretty quickly while slowing you down too. In comparison, Viper's slow is 2 seconds and Drow's is 1.5.

I'm not sure about revenants being invulnerable or not yet. Their attacks will be pretty weak but they'll attack as fast as creeps. I'm still debating whether to make the AoE dependent on the revenants or just be around Visage.

[xy4kuz4x]

Soul Swarm - kinda soul rip to ownself.

Cloak - null, but i think current is better.

Chill - i need more explanation. I don't want to embarass myself

assumption + subskill - just like monk's skill in Ragnarok.

I don't like if his role changed

[night_sky95]

Let me see...

Soul Swarm - a non-ulti Exorcism... It's fine I guess since we have many of those..
• Soul Steal - Life Drain
• Shadow Strike - Viper Strike
• etc....

Cloak - Like what you said, An Aphotic Shield that instead of absorbing all the damage, it absorbs only half and heals instead of damages. It's fine with me..

Chill - Like xy4kuz4x, I'm not sure with this skill. Elaborate more...

Soul assumption - This is almost like(or maybe like) the skill of Zephyr in HoN...
It's fine *I guess* since THIS IS Dota and not HoN..

[Heelz]

Basically, Grave Chill works like this. Every successive hit slows the attacked unit more and gives Visage the same bonus. So with level 4 Grave Chill:

First hit slows enemy by 8%, gives Visage an 8% speed bonus.
Second hit before the duration ends replaces the 8% slow with a 16% slow, and Visage gains a 16% bonus.
Third hit slows 24%, Visage gains 24%, etc.

If Visage stops attacking, the slow and bonuses will both end soon after.

[SNOW37]

First Skill: Sounds good but what is the duration? Do the locust units only attack once, or do they last for a duration of time like the ladder locust swarm?

Second Skill: I think the gravechill should stay as a percentage and not as a fixed amount. This way it there a bigger difference between it and LoA's shield and its more related to the current version. Also maybe change the hotkey to E instead of V just to make his overall hotkeys closer togethor.

Third Skill: A basic attack enchanment. Maybe increase the duration to 3 or 4 secconds as 2 is really short early game. Also note that on range units buff placers overide crit and bash, so that might be a problem.

Forth Skill: A nice change, but is a little weak on the heal and a bit high on the damage. Maybe make it heal/damage 30 each instead of 20/40

overall a nice change I would support this remake as it makes his less passive and mroe active.

[Heelz]

Thanks for your input.

Soul Swarm doesn't have a duration, each soul just attacks once and returns to Visage. If there's at least one unit in range, it'll release the swarm and Visage will get healed fully.

I'm not sure what you mean by keeping Gravekeeper's a percentage. Do you mean make it block/heal damage based on the unit's max health?

I don't think 2 seconds on Grave Chill as as short as it seems. Viper's slow lasts 2 seconds and sometimes it seems like forever. But since Visage's isn't an arrow and he's naturally a slow attacker, maybe it can be buffed a bit. My only concern is that once he's built up bonuses, it would pretty much be impossible to get away from him or fight.

About the ultimate, I noticed that heals tend to have lower numbers and damage tends to be higher. Death Pulse for example. So I made the heal lower than the damage. I didn't want to make a team heal too strong combined with Mek and Gravekeeper's. When you look at it, the damage isn't really that high. At level 1 with full revenants, it's 240 damage, level 2 360, and level 3 480. It's an ultimate, it should deal high damage, and this comes at the cost of Visage's DPS.

I'll consider having it both heal and damage 30, though, since having them be equal less complicated.

[SNOW37]

For soul swarm I think you should scale the mana cost a bit as 75 damage isnt really worth 120 mana early game. Also what type of damage does it deal, physical or magical?

By a percentage heal, I mean it just reduces all damage by some percent, just as the current version does. This means that while the duration is up, the target hero would have all damage reduced by X amount.

For grave chill maybe make it 2.5 seconds because as you said he does attack really slow and with a subpar agility gain hes not going to be the fastest attacker.

For his ult I geuss your right, I didnt really look at other healing/damage skills when I reveiwed yours.

[Agressive]

he has 3 healing abilities with meka its gonna be hard time killing him.He will be immortal at early game and very easy farming and late game we will be high dsp with his passive.Its little imbalanced i think.

[kings.empire]

Overall I quite like this remake however time to go a bit deeper now mmm?

Skill 1: Seems out of place imo...I mean you already have a spell that protects incoming damage and that damage heals to those around you...I think...

Skill 2: Is this a reverse Aphotic Shield? Protects 175 damage and if the shield breaks, instead of healing it heals those around him? Hmm...bit weird and yet better than the passive he has atm...

Skill 3: I quite like this idea, though questionable if being able to do this as a free passive is okay or not because he is ranged after so harassing is pretty easy...

Ultimate: Decent change however I'm going to miss that maphack this skill gives me...

Question: Are the revenants still targettable? And are they still the same revenants? If so, 12 seems a bit too much don't you think?

Also for balance, might need to place a timer per revenant...then again that will kind of kill his game since it would he'll still rely on death of units...

Overall I like where this is going, but some changes are giving me like and dislike issues...pity :/

[Heelz]

Here's some eye-candy for you guys. I'm almost done with my testmap and will post it here soon.

Soul Swarm





Soul Assumption



Discharge Souls

[Heelz]

First version of the test map has been posted. Enjoy!

[Torchic Maniac]

There are some things that I love about this remake and stuff that I hate about it.

Soul Swarm seems like a nifty skill. I really like it.
Gravekeeper's Cloak needs to scale up but the change is OK.
Grave Chill is one of his original skills. It doesn't need to be changed into a combat only skill.
The ultimate seems a bit lame now since it is a +damage skill, but it is a versatile skill.

To be honest, I really like his current ultimate since it made into feared pusher (which is what is he supposed to be). Overall, it seems like an INT DPSer now who needs mana to tank (which I doubt he'll be able tank with this remake). Visage doesn't need a role change. The real problem with Visage now is that he is boring. He can be quite powerful but he is too passive to be an INT hero.

My vote is nulled.

[Knarfi]

I like the idea really!

Like the others said, rework the second skill maybe.
Maybe something, that holds your opponent in range, like a Soullink.

Soullink

Visage creates a link with an enemy, drains 30/40/50/60 life per second of both. At the end of the duration, the lifelink heals the one, who dealt more damage for 50/100/150/200.

Single Target,
100/110/120/130 Manacost,
20 Cooldown,
3/3.5/4/5 Duration.
800/700/600/500 Range

If one of them breaks the Link, he will receive 100 damage

In Depth:
-You click on an enemy.
-You and the enemy lose Hp.
-The Duration ends, you dealt more damage, you get healed.

Synergies with first skill and ultimate

[OMGjun]

got little imba,all the skill can heal Visage easily..

[EtherMage]

Great remake, way better than current one. I just hate the new visage, he has no role.