Barnes does not directly engage in combat, yet he plays a powerful role buffing allies and debuffing enemies. Depending on the team composition and the map, the player must select the best play to fulfill it's potential on the match.
The
Red Riding Hood is the best option when you have a key melee teammate (Illidan, Kerrigan, Sonya...) granting huge survivability, crowd control and additional damage to him.
The
Romulo and Julianne is the best option when you need another support or when you have a key ranged teammate (can also work on melee's but
Red Riding Hood synergizes better).
The
Wizard of Oz is the best option when you need to pick enemies out of position or debuff a key assassin of the enemy team, also offers a good survivability to the actor playing the role of
Dorothee and a damage boost to the
Strawman
His heroic abilities add additional tricks to his sleeve:
Actor: Run Away Little Girl, Run Away increases the threat the
Big Bad Wolf offers to squishy targets
Director's Cut: Undying Love further increases the synergy between
Romulo and
Julianne and increases their survivability
Actor: The Crone grants a huge buff to another of your allies granting Area of Effect damage.
Attention, Ladies and Gentleman works amazingly to disrupt the enemy's objectives, such as: Interrupting the Raven Lord tribute capture, Stunning enemies while they're doing the golem on Haunted Mines, and many others
Heroes of the Storm Build Guides
For each ability set, I'll give just one example.
First, for the Big Bad Wolf, it's just a 20% HP increase.
That is insane.
That's a permanent protective shield that can be healed and can regenerate.
Just grant that to whoever you feel is in need, or to Cho'Gall, and BOOM. they find themselves able to dive in deeper than they should.
Secondly, for the second set, the combo between romulo and Julianne would be WAY too strong. Give Julianne to tychus and make Cho'Gall a Romulo, and you get 6% (up to 9%) of Cho'Gall's health every SECOND. That would make him virtually IMMORTAL.
The third set of abilities, now.
The Tinhead thing is overpowered. You debuff an enemy for up to 60% of their attack speed. So the way I see it, and the way it would work in the game, is as follow : The guy has 1 second of 20% slow attack speed, and then 1 sec of 40%, then 2s of 60%. That makes 4 seconds of auto attack slow, and once that stops, you get a 6 second cd to it. So this is pretty strong for your team, as it RUINS the Butcher -- he's helpless if he isn't auto attacking. Same for Artanis, but I wonder if you have to recast it or...?
The Heroics, now. And I'll review them all.
First : RUN AWAY LITTLE GIRL... run away....
This is actually VERY strong. Give someone lika Illidan, Butcher, Kharazim, or Tychus the big bad wolf and anyone that doesn't have Cho'Gall health the red riding hood and they just die. It's 8 seconds of 50% extra damage. The butcher has a hard dive, and every 10 seconds, so it has a 2 second effective cd. The butcher, if talented for it, does over 700 damage a second with his auto attacks. Without auto attack buffs other than his trait's. 50% added to that is just MONSTRUOUS. It's way too powerful and would need to be scaled down VERY much.
Secondly : Director's Cut : Undying Love.
I already stated it, but the synergy even without this is too strong, even overpowered, and you just make it even more imbalanced with this... Yeah, this needs a rework. Not just scaling down, but a rework.
Thirdly : Actor : The Crone.
Not nearly as powerful as the others, this makes for powerful wave clear, and with the debuff on it I can just say it'd be too good with KT's chain bomb (making it jump to two extra targets -- I'm assuming here that they are talented, so it'd spread again, to do more and more damage) or with Butcher's auto attacks, as they already do incredibly high amounts of damage. Not overly powerful, this actually sounds pretty nice.
Finally : Attention, Ladies and Gentlemen.
I am not sure how I feel about that one. Stuns everyone, which could be devastating. Murky has 10 extra seconds and stuns one person and it's considered pretty good -- this is a full 2.5 second stun on everyone (except Barnes, I'm assuming) and 1.25 on your enemies, which is essentially very strong for boss steals, if Barnes is, indeed, a body on the map, like Abathur.
Other than that, I don't have a ton to say about it, except that this needs a rework here, scaling down there, etc.
I'm eager to look back on your concept in a few days!