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- Dec 18, 2007
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- 1,098
Generating a Hero Idea
Content:
1- Starting it off
2- Deciding on the Stats
3- Deciding on the Abilities
4- Polishing the hero
5- Final Notes
6- Recommended Links
1- Starting It Off
There are two ways to start a hero. Here's way 1.You start with a model. Choose any you want from the available ones or download one.
Another way is to start with a story/hero class first. This way helps with the part about themes because you would have more or less thought of the hero's theme.
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Theme: When designing a hero, it is always good to start with a theme. Lets think about a theme first. Think of what kind of weapons the hero should use, what kind of abilities could he/she have. This is important but you may change it to fit the hero's skillset/attribute and such.
Tip: Use the hero's weapon as a guideline as to what kind of theme he/she should be based on.
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Story: This bit is optional, just write a simple story about the hero's past and statistics.
After the basic stuff is done, lets move onto the second part.
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2- Deciding on the Stats
Now its time to decide the stats! Lets start with the primary attribute.Generally, the hero's primary attribute should reflect on the hero's class or his/her role in the team. Tanker heroes are generally strength heroes, damage dealers agility and casters intelligence. Also, do take note of the hero's theme when choosing the primary attribute. However, you may also choose to create something "special". If so, feel free to give randomness a try, you may sometimes be surprised at the outcome.
Strength heroes are mostly slow/"clumsy" and powerful. Agility heroes fast and agile. Intelligence heroes generally have powerful spells but low health.
Tip: The hero's weapon can also give you an idea on the primary attributes. Strength heroes generally hold heavy and strong weapons, agility heroes light and swift weapons and intelligence heroes usually conjure magic/use a staff or wand.
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After the primary attribute is decided, you can now start giving the hero his/her stats. Heroes generally have their primary attribute as their highest stat, but if you feel that the hero might be too powerful if he/she has too much of that stat, you could always change it. This part is pretty much up to you.
Finally, give the hero damage based on what he/she is supposed to do. If he/she attacks extremely quickly, you might want to reduce the attack damage and increase it if the hero is going to have pathetic attack speed. Ranged heroes should generally have less damage than melee heroes to balance the odds.
Attack speed should depend on what you set for the damage and the hero's attributes.
Other things like movespeed armour etc. are pretty much up to you, balance them however you like.
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3- Deciding on the Abilities
Things to take note of:
There is one thing you should always remember. Spells should fit the map type. Select the Map Type of your map to see some useful tips.In a hero arena, there are mostly only heroes and their summoned units. A key thing to remember is that there are little units so having skills that can affect too many units will be weird.
Also, spells should be more powerful compared to normal spells as your aim is to kill. There shouldn't be a case where a hero cannot even get a single kill. That would destroy the whole purpose of a hero arena.
Also, spells should be more powerful compared to normal spells as your aim is to kill. There shouldn't be a case where a hero cannot even get a single kill. That would destroy the whole purpose of a hero arena.
In an AoS, remember that there are creeps. Heroes could have spells that are more powerful if there are many creeps or are more powerful if there are little creeps.
The main purpose of an AoS is to destroy the enemy base. Hero skills could be focused on killing, surviving or pushing. Hero killing is not the most important, it is just to help you push or become stronger.
Spells should not be too powerful or heroes would just keep killing each other, making the game a hero arena.
The main purpose of an AoS is to destroy the enemy base. Hero skills could be focused on killing, surviving or pushing. Hero killing is not the most important, it is just to help you push or become stronger.
Spells should not be too powerful or heroes would just keep killing each other, making the game a hero arena.
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Method 1- Starting with a core skill.
This might be the easier way to create a set of of abilities as you have to think of mainly 1 ability (doesn't matter if it is an ultimate) and expand on it.Ok, lets start. First, think of an ability you want to be the hero's core ability. It should generally fit the theme of the hero and it should be the skill that you should focus on.
Now, the next step is to start thinking of skills that can help with the skill's effect. Like if you need to gank with lots of units, a disable would be good. If it is a super nuke, a thing that amplifies spell damage might be good. Give some thought to the core skill and think about what can complement it.
Now just keep thinking of more complementing skills and you would soon have a full set of spells. However, if you do not have a full set, refer to Method 2 for a way on how to create place-filler skills.
Method 2- Thinking as you go.
This is a less systematic approach in my opinion. In this method, you simply think of any spell that have connection to the hero's class. This would be easier if you just need 1 or 2 spells to complete a hero. Use this method to complete the skillset of the hero if you cannot think of any other synergies.Tip: Whenever thinking of abilities, always refer to the hero class and make sure that the ability matches its class, or the spell would seem out of place.
Also, most heroes shoud have at least 1 slow/chasing/disable/nuke/stun spell. If a hero does not have anyone of those spells, he/she might be more difficult to use.
Note: Try not to use skills that does stuff based on a certain stat if your map features tomes. Also, strength and agility heroes should not have high mana cost spells and intelligence heroes should have higher mana cost spells. [/h3]
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4- Polishing the Hero
This is probably the last step of creating a hero idea. After creating you skills, giving the heroes his/her stats, attack etc. It is now time to polish the hero and balance it.Balancing
The first part of polishing a hero would be to try and balance the hero. Test the hero and try out all the skills in any order to see if there are any combinations too powerful and spammable. I will list some imbalanced things and how to fix them.On second thought, it would be easier if you just make what you feel is too strong weaker. If you think the spell does too much damage, reduce the damage. If you feel a spell lasts too long, reduce the duration and etc. After testing the spells, check if the hero has too high attack damage or anything when at max level or at level 1.
Aiming
If you feel that the hero is generally balanced, you could try to make him more powerful. However,this can rarely be achieved without making him imbalanced. That is when you implement "aiming" abilities. These abilities are generally more powerful then click-and-hit abilities like Storm Bolt but usually require some skill to use.This would make the user feel happy that they mananged to score a hit with such a skill. Do note that these skills should be more powerful than click-and-hit abilities as stated above.
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Early-Middle-Late Game Heroes
When making a map, you do not want to make all the heroes extremely powerful early game and useless late game or anything like that. You should have some variety. There should be different kinds of heroes- Early Game, Middle Game and Late Game heroes.Early Game heroes should have powerful skills that helps them kill or survive easily. The spells should become weaker as the game progress, making them less powerful later in the game. However, dominating at Early Game should help them throughout the rest of the game.
Primary Attribute: Intelligence
Primary Attribute: Intelligence
Middle Game heroes mostly have spells that are powerful at max level or when they have sufficient health/mana to use their spells efficiently. They should have spells that are powerful but need enough mana to combo their spells. Their spells should start weak but become stronger, but not too strong.
Primary Attribute: Strength
Primary Attribute: Strength
Late game heroes are generally weak in the whole game. They are mostly dependant on items or their skills which become powerful late game. Their abilities are generally passive abilities or abilities that boost a certain stat by a % so they become more powerful as that certain stat increases.
These heroes should have low health and should be rather weak Early Game or they will become extremely powerful without much effort.
Also, they SHOULD NOT be able to get money extremely quickly unless the hero is extremely item dependant and cannot do without items.
Primary Attribute: Agility
These heroes should have low health and should be rather weak Early Game or they will become extremely powerful without much effort.
Also, they SHOULD NOT be able to get money extremely quickly unless the hero is extremely item dependant and cannot do without items.
Primary Attribute: Agility
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Tooltips
The final part of polishing a hero is making good tooltips. Heroes should have tooltips that can help players understand how this hero's abilities can be fully realised. The tooltips should at least include a description of what it does and the values (slow %, duration, damage etc). Other things like cooldown are optional
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5- Final Notes
- If a hero has too many spells that are hard to target, it wouldn't be fun as the player might be annoyed at how hard it is to kill. Thus I suggest a moderation in the kind of spells the heroes have.
- A hero should not be too weak early game that he/she can't even survive
- I would suggest that you do not give hero spells that have nothing to do with his/her theme.
- Remember that you should try not have spells that have a sub effect that remains the same throughout the levels and is not increased in any way. That makes the player level it once and throw it away. If that is the case, you should make the hero have that skill as an Innate skill in the first place.
- It is recommended not to make a spell have more mana cost than the hero can support at the first possible level he/she can learn the spell. The hero should be able to cast the spell at least once when he/she first learns the spell.
- There should be at least a few "Newbie-Friendly" heroes. Meaning heroes that are easy to use but not imbalanced. A simple example would be a hero with loads of health but weak spells. That way, newbies could use the hero and at least survive with it. That's the key point of a Newbie-Friendly hero.
- A good hero is never complete without fans, test the map with some friends or on Battle.Net and see if anyone enjoys using them. Based on their feedback, change the hero slightly. Note that you should also consider balance and your own preferance, not just others'
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The tutorial ends here. Repeat Step 4 as many times as you want until you reach something good. I hope that this tutorial has helped you in creating a hero idea and some quality heroes. I really hope to see some good results!
Comments are appreciated!
Please do post your hero in hidden tags if you need help with a hero idea after reading this tutorial! I would gladly be of an assistance.
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6- Recommended Tutorials
Spell-Making (GUI)
Creating Some Basic Abilities by paskovich
Basics of Trigger-Enhanced Spells by Daelin
How to make a chain spell in GUI by Daelin
Fixing Memory Leaks (GUI)
Basics of Memory Leaks by Ralle
Things that Leak by Ralle
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![Dreadnought[dA]](/data/avatars/m/134/134647.jpg?1465504677){kind=avatar}
Hey, that makes sense. I guess strength heroes DO rely on abilities ocassionaly. 
+Rep
