[Altered Melee] Rate my hero for Melee Maps: Dragon Sworn Battle Mage

[Hive_Parasite]

Hello,

I'd like to present to everyone a tavern hero for melee maps for you guys to disect.

He is a high elf dragon sworn (prestige class from old warcraft rpg) using the Dark Soldier model by Freddyk.

Dragonsworns are heroes who earn the trust of dragons and learn secret dragon techniques (as per the discarded lore).

This particular Dragonsworn is in service of the blue dragon flight, because their knowledge and magical artifacts can maintain the loyalty of High Elves after the destruction of the Sun Well.

His skills are as follows:

Demoralising Shout - a skill made using Howl of Terror, which reduces enemy armor by 2/3/4 for a period of time.

True Strike Aura - True Shot aura, but it affects melee units only.

Mirror Image - scout the map without feeding XP to the enemy hero - at the cost of a hero slot.

Ultimate:

Summon Draconic Allies - summons 3 level 6 Blue Dragons for a short perriod of time. (I made this as a stand in because I can't decide what ultimate to use)

Variant Ultimate (it's a back up ultimate I built for this hero, but I think it breaks melee maps):

Dracon Strike - Storm Bolt, but it can hit invulnerable units. 180 cooldown, same stats as a level 3 Storm Bolt.

So far testing shows this hero is a good first pick for mass rifles with human and mass bears for night elf.

Let me know what you guys think.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Disclaimer: I don't play melee maps against other people so I can't speak with regard to balance.

The first two seem alright (maybe the aura could increase damage more compared to Trueshot).

Is mirror image only considered useful for scouting in melee?

You could base his ultimate off of Avatar, gaining blue dragon characteristics for a short while. As in, spell immune, more armor, and cold splash damage for the duration.

 

[Hive_Parasite]

Mirror Images do not grant the player experience for the purpose of leveling up the hero. Mirror Image also cancels magical effects and (to the best of my memory) transformations.

This is a no healing spells, support hero, who relies on micro management of units and clones to place a strong debuff on enemies. And for the life of me I can't decide on a good ultimate for this guy, which I can make using just the object editor.

 

[cleavinghammer]

In that case, you could do something like this: summons X frost images (instead of copies) that do no damage and give no xp, have a cold aura that slows enemies (or something thematically similar like permanent frost armor), and allow the hero to instantly switch places with one, making their positioning more important.

For the ultimate: Metamorphosis granting partial dragon form with improved or extra abilities (Breath of Frost, Shout causes lowered damage in addition to armor, images do damage, aura also boosts melee armor)?

 

[Hive_Parasite]

Hello, sorry for the late reply.

I just wanted to thank you for the time given to try and help me out.

The ideea of making mirror images that are automatically buffed with Frost Armor feels like a ultimate in itself - to me at least.

Mirror Image by itself cleanses all magical effects and create duplicates, which give no XP on death. Add to that the effect of Frost Armor (any rank) on all those clones + caster, and you get a very op ability.

I was able to find a ultimate skill I am happy with and it also helps me sell of the lore behind my blood elven creation.

I call it Burst of Arcane Missiles, it is based on Fan of Knives and it's basically, once every 180 you deal so much AoE damage that you can free yourself of a surround, if Mirror Image didn't help.

I also added in the description of that ultimate, that the Blue Dragonflight taught this hero how to speed up casting time of Arcane Missiles so that he launches a lot of them at once.