Arthas by Scudmarx

• Level 1
  • (Passive) Block - Every 5 seconds, gain 75 Physical Armor against the next enemy Hero Basic Attack, reducing the damage taken by 75%. Stores up to 2 charges.
    
  • (Q) Eternal Hunger -Quest: Using Frostmourne Hungers on an enemy Hero permanently increases the damage it deals by 1%, up to a maximum of 100%.
    
  • (W) Frost Presence - Howling Blast's cooldown is reduced by 5 seconds when it hits an enemy Hero.
• Level 4
  
  • (Passive) Frozen Wastes - Frozen Tempest's radius is increased by 15% for 3 seconds every second it deals damage to at least one enemy Hero, stacking up to 3 times.
    
  • (E) Deathlord - Reduces Death Coil's cooldown by 4 seconds and increase its range by 25%.
    
  • (Passive) Biting Cold - Frozen Tempest damage increased by 100%, plus an additional 100% against Minions and Mercenaries.
    
• Level 7
  
  • (Active) Rune Tap - Activate to heal for 20% of your max Health. Your basic attacks reduce the cooldown of Rune Tap by 1 second, increased to 3 seconds for attacks against enemy Heroes.
    Cooldown: 40 seconds
    
  • (Passive) Icebound Fortitude - Gain 10 Armor, reducing damage taken by 10%, and reduce the duration of Stuns, Slows, and Roots against Arthas by 35%.
• Level 13
  
  • (W) Trail of Frost - Increases Howling Blast's range by 30% and causes it to also root enemies between you and the target for 1.25 seconds.
    
  • (Q) Frost Strike - Reduces Frostmourne Hungers' cooldown by 2 seconds. Frostmourne Hungers also slows the enemy by 40% for 1.5 seconds.
    
  • (Passive) Frigid Winds - Frozen Tempest reduces enemy Armor by 5 per second, increasing all damage taken by 5%, stacking up to 5 times.
• Level 16
  
  • (Passive) Remorseless Winter - Enemies that remain within Frozen Tempest for 3 seconds are rooted for 1.75 seconds. This effect can only occur once every 10 seconds.
    
  • (Q) Frostmourne Feeds - Increases the amount of Basic Attacks empowered by Frostmourne Hungers to 2.
    
  • (E) Embrace Death - Death Coil deals 10% more damage for each 10% of life you are missing.
• Level 20
  
  • (R) Legion of Northrend - Allied Heroes are also resurrected. Use of allied Heroic abilities can be toggled off. Increases the number of Ghouls summoned.
    
  • (R) Absolute Zero - Sindragosa flies twice as far. Enemy Heroes are rooted for 2 seconds, and then slowed by 60% for 3.5 seconds.
    
  • (Passive) Death's Advance - Passively increases your Movement Speed by 10%. Damage taken no longer dismounts Arthas.
    
  • (Active) Anti-Magic Shell - Activate to grant Arthas 100 Spell Armor for 3 seconds, reducing Ability Damage taken by 100%, and heal Arthas for 25% of the damage prevented.
    Cooldown: 60 Seconds

Why Rework Arthas?

1. Lately we have seen a lot of tank-heavy strategies and a lot of autoattack/bloodlust strategies. Blizzard describes Arthas as being the tank which is best against teams with a lot of basic attack (physical) damage. So he should have been a big part of the metagame. And yet he has been nowhere to be seen, because he is simply not very good.
2. Arthas has been the victim of a lot of teasing to do with the large disconnect between his importance to the Warcraft universe and his relatively wimpy appearance in HotS. In short, he doesn't feel anything like as epic as he should do, and feels more like a generic Death Knight and less like the almighty and terrible Lich King he really is.

I'm attempting to fix both of those.

What are the headline changes?

• Frozen Tempest is now Arthas' trait, and is permanently passively on at no mana cost and with the attack speed slow baseline (but greatly reduced damage and slightly reduced slowing effect).
  Arthas' OOM-dance gameplay is unworthy of the Lich King. Arthas does not 'run out of mana', he dominates the scene with giant tempests of ice. Always. Getting into a brawl anywhere near Arthas should feel like a bad idea.
• Army of the Dead now returns to life any enemy hero that has fallen in battle with the Lich King and binds them into his service. Also summons Ghouls who seek out and attack any enemies they can find.
  Did anybody ever use Army of the Dead? It needed some major love. The true horror of the Lich King was always in his ability to resurrect the enemy's mightiest heroes against their former comrades. Now, every hero who falls in battle will once again empower the Lich King's armies.

Other Changes

Mostly other changes are made as a knock-on effect from the above. Frozen Tempest becoming passive and free meant that:

• Frostmourn Hungers is now a regular active ability and has moved to Q.
• It has a mana cost and no longer restores mana.
• Its cooldown has been reduced from 12 seconds to 9 seconds.
• Eternal Hunger (Level 1 Talent) no longer increases the amount of mana restored, and no longer adds +25% damage for a quest reward. Instead, it simply increases the damage dealt by Frostmourne Hungers, up to a total of +100% after hitting 100 enemy heroes.

As Frostmourn Hungers became Arthas' principle "core damage ability", Death Coil got pushed over to E and needed some more shine. To streamline its gameplay and reinforce its identity as a powerful self-sustain nuke:

• Immortal Coil is now baseline, and Death Coil can no longer be self-cast.
• Cooldown increased from 9 seconds to 12 seconds.
• Deathlord (Level 4) now reduces the cooldown by 4 seconds, up from 2 seconds.

As Frozen Tempest became permanent and free, its damage was significantly reduced to compensate.

• Frozen Wastes (Level 4) no longer reduces the mana cost of Frozen Tempest as it no longer has a mana cost. Instead, it increases Arthas' 'area denial' utility by dramatically increasing the radius of Frozen Tempest during combat, ensuring that enemies have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
• Biting Cold (Level 4) is an alternative to Frozen Wastes that exchanges the wide-area utility for a substantial damage increase, providing a significant increase in Arthas' AOE damage and a dramatic improvement in waveclear. Instead of granting 30% increased damage, it now grants a 100% increase, increased to 200% against minions and mercenaries.
• Frigid Winds (Level 13) no longer applies an attack speed slow as that is now baseline. Instead, it causes Frozen Tempest to make all enemies brittle, reducing their armour by 5 per stack up to 25, increasing all damage taken by enemies trapped in his storm by up to 25%.

Some other changes were made largely for flavour purposes.

• Rune Tap (Level 7) is now active instead of passive. It provides Arthas with some anti-burst utility by providing him a large self-heal on a long cooldown, and preserves the 'basic attacks heal' idea by reducing that cooldown with each basic attack. In sustained fights where Arthas can keep attacking enemy heroes, Rune Tap will cooldown fast enough to be used multiple times, providing a significant increase to sustainability.
• Icebound Fortitude (Level 7) is now passive instead of active, and provides Arthas with a flat reduction in the amount of damage he takes and a permanent reduction to the duration of stuns, roots and slows. Making the CC-reduction passive makes Arthas feel unstoppable, enhancing his 'implacable juggernaut' fantasy.
• Death's Advance (Level 20) is no longer activated for 30% increased movement speed. Arthas does not sprint. Instead, in addition to the 10% passive movement speed at all times, Arthas is no longer dismounted by taking damage. This provides Arthas the ability to move at 130% speed during fights if you really still want that, but in a way which makes him feel implacable rather than frantic.

How exactly does Army of the Dead work?

Think of Army of the Dead as having two parts:

• Revives fallen Heroes and binds them to Arthas' service.
• Summons many (weak) Ghouls.

For the first part, for each dead enemy Hero when Army of the Dead is cast, and whenever an enemy dies while he is channeling, Arthas creates a copy of that hero with all of its talents and abilities. The copy will fight using all of its abilities, acting just like an AI-controlled version of that Hero. The copy will share ability cooldowns with their counterpart - so if the hero died without having used their heroic ability, the clone can use it and will put it on cooldown for when the hero revives. The scourged hero's resurrection timer will not be affected by this, though if it ends while Arthas is channeling they will not revive until their copy expires or is killed. The player that is scourged will see the undead version as themselves, with their camera focused on it and their ability cooldowns reflecting its actions, though they will be entirely helpless to control themselves.

At level 20 if the Legion of Northrend talent is chosen, this affects Allies as well, reviving allied Heroes (again, just AI-controlled clones of them with shared ability cooldowns). Legion of Northrend adds a secondary ability to his action bar which can be toggled on and off and which when on will mean that the allied hero clones will not use their ultimate abilities and will automatically die when their resurrection timer ends.

For the second part, it behaves like Azmodan's Demonic Invasion ultimate, only with more (but far weaker) minions that will actively scatter in all directions seeking out enemies (including checking in brush). The ghouls are very weak and serve mainly to scout enemies out and to eat shots from structures (and to make the spell visually far more epic).

All scourged creatures die when Arthas stops Channeling, and Arthas must remain stationary while casting it. He cannot be interrupted in any way besides being killed. (Art note: Arthas delivers his entire Icecrown Citadel 'I will raise them...' monologue during the channel. Giving enemies even more reason to want to stop him.)