Eve of the Apocalypse: Twilight

As a FYI, DotA has come out with a new version containing a very interesting new hero with a completely new spell mechanism. It is kind of unusual for DoTA actually, as they seem to be more conventional with their heroes.

While I dont see EoTA stealing it or anything, it may give some of the clever people here some ideas for thinking outside the current paradyme.

The quick version:

Kael the Invoker. Has 3 skills, with 7 max ranks instead of their usual 4ranks. Each skill is free to use and creates an Orb, kind of like having an orb of corruption or whatever, graphically. You can have 3 orbs over your head at any time in any combination.
The first orb adds a bit of HP regeneration. 2nd one adds move speed and attack speed, and 3rd one adds pure attack damage. Each orb improves with skill level.

Then, his Ultimate skill is called Invoke, and will create a new spell for use... and its based on your current config of orbs. So if you have 2 Exort and 1 Quas balls, you get a new icon for Chaos Meteor. If you have a different combo when you click the Invoke, you get a different spell (10 different combos).

Each spell has abilities that are based on your skill level for orbs used in its construction. So the chaos meteor gains damage based on Exort, and range based on Quas. With only 1 level of Exort, you can always configure any of the 10 spells, but any based on exort would be weak damage-wise. Similarly, ignoring quas means all your quas-based spells will have pitiful range or duration, or slow-speed, or whatever quas affects for each spell.


Its really an ingenius system, roughly equivalent to Nephilum in coolness but totally different.
I could see some of the general ideas being useful for a new Nephilum-equivalent for Creeps or Elves.


If anyone wants to play around, goto the dota allstars website, download the 6.50 or later map. Make a 1 player game and when it comes up, type -apem. Then choose the Invoker from the top righthand side inns on the bad-guy's side.



Anyways, hope people find it interesting. Posted in General Discussion since it is not EoTA specific and not an eota-suggestion per se.

Invoker has been taken out and re-added to DotA too many times.

Ok...

I couldn't care less about what DoTA does with it.... as long as EoTA people can take a look-see and maybe pick up some new idea material.

The way Nephilim (Dreadlord) works doesn't fit your idea of a "unique skill system"?

Hmm, sounds interesting, I haven't played Dota in a while, 6.49 I think. I'll have to check it out.

P.S. I know how ridiculous this sounds, but Dota is actually quite fun once in a while, I prefer the Tank heroes (as with eota) such as Centaur and Choas Knight. Just some random stuff for you.

As for this idea, I think it has potential, I say go with it, just make sure not to copy Dota too much.
--AND

Everyone.

AnAngryBearDoctor wrote:The way Nephilim (Dreadlord) works doesn't fit your idea of a "unique skill system"?

He said

randomd00d wrote:Its really an ingenius system, roughly equivalent to Nephilum in coolness but totally different.
I could see some of the general ideas being useful for a new Nephilum-equivalent for Creeps or Elves.

Ouch, just skimmed over his post. Didn't seem to catch that.

Its basicly a spell crafting system, don't see them too often but not that original. Isn't the spellbinders map roughly the same thing (I haven't played it, might be getting the wrong name)? Something like it would have made its way into eota eventually, although I hadn't thought of this specific setup.

EotA2 was actually suppose to do something suprisingly close to it for every hero though.

DarnYak

Cool. I personally hadn't seen such a system, so I thought it was pretty interesting.

I should clarify that I am NOT making any statement regarding EoTA, such as dissing or implying this hero should be in EoTA. It was simply an interesting idea that I thought people here could look at and be inspired to think of EoTA appropriate ideas to help out Yak.


Actually, my favorite part was the quickswap buffs, where you can have 3 orbs of different types to pump your hero up depending on the situation, and how many points youve put into each orb buff. I liked the versatility and although similar to aura-swapping, it is still a bit unique.

So something along the lines of Rue's aura switching? Cool.

A hero whos spells are based on how many units are near him? Depending on what skills he has, it would make him very effective at siegeing and defence. Big waves...BIG POWER!

If Dota already did this, I apologise. I dont play Dota.

Having a spell that draws in energy based on the nearby units eh? I designed one with a ability similar to this, had a weak move that was a charge, it drew in power based on the corpses in a huge AoE, dealing minor damage from each, but devastating with a large pile of corpses..."Sin Harvest" I think it was called...

Ooh yeah...that's pretty clever! Would work well for a bard-like support character.

It could be a buff like Camraderie that grants attack speed, damage, whatever, and the more that are affected by the buff, the greater the effect. (hard to balance though)

Or, something like Voice of Dissonance that does damage to something based on how many friendly units are nearby.


Once again, balance is the issue. You have to make the ability somewhat useful when only around 4-8 allied creeps might be nearby. But, it cannot be overpowered if you have a big command-tower-created mass of 50 assaulting a base.

We already have a spell that can push a lane from one base to another if it's crowded enough: Rend. First row of corpses explode, killing creeps on second and third row which explode as well and kill things further back... And to make it even more overpowered in LAN games(normal internet can't handle the enormous ammount of units needed for this to work) it also provides the SB with infinite mana, allowing him to spam the rest of his abilities based arround having a tiny manapool.