Belial by Murraythehuman

Talents that help Belial close the gap.

Q: Incept - Hitting heroes with Mind Break grants Belial 20% increased movement speed for 2 seconds. Basic attacks against heroes refresh the duration.

E: Lord of Flies - Whenever Hellstrike damages an enemy hero Belial is surrounded by flies for 4 seconds. Flies deal 22 damage per second and slow enemies in their radius by 25%.

Passive: Patient Manipulator - Belial gains 5% increased movement speed and mounted movement speed. Each basic ability/trait not on cooldown increases this bonus by 2.5%.

Flexibility talents that let Belial lean into different roles. Laning (with a bit of sustain), w questing, or raw dive.

Passive: Ichor Claws - Belial's basic attacks cleave and heal him for 20% of the damage done.

W: Fated Foe - Quest: Damage heroes with Tempt Fate. Reward: Every time a hero is damaged by Tempt Fate its damage over time is increased by 2. Damaging the primary heroic target of Tempt Fate with the explosion grants an additional 6 bonus damage.

E: Hellforgery - Belial gains 30 armor while moving and channelling with Hellstrike. The armor then persists for 2 seconds afterwards for each enemy hero hit by Hellstrike's explosion, up to a maximum of 10 seconds.

Offensive talents for some extra playmaking power and disruption.

W: Fatebreaker - While heroes are slowed by Tempt Fate, their physical armor is reduced by 20, causing them to take 20% increased damage from basic attacks.

E: Demon Imprint - Enemy heroes hit by Hellstrike's explosion are marked for 5 seconds. Hitting marked heroes with Belial's basic attacks removes the mark and damages them for 3% of their maximum health, healing Belial 50% of the damage done.

Trait (D): Lunacy - Each basic ability not on cooldown causes Lunacy's cooldown to refresh 25% faster. Passive: Increase the range of Belial's basic abilities by 10%.

(Detailed above.)

A flexible talent tier that lets Belial find new strengths. These talents all bring out the best of Belial's level 4 quest.

Q: Harvester of Minds - Tempt Fate and Hellstrike have their cooldowns reduced by 1.5 seconds whenever a hero is damaged by Mind Break.

W: Ruler of Fate - Tempt Fate can be cast on Belial, reducing its cooldown by 2 seconds. When cast this way, Belial receives a 251 health shield for 2 seconds when the runes explode, and the width and radius of of the runes are increased by 33%.

Trait (D): Guess Again - After an illusion ability fades, the next basic ability cast within 2.5 seconds has 25% increased spell power.

High power potential talents for Belial that have the power to swing fights.

Q: Break the Unbreakable - Whenever Mind Break deals damage to a hero, its damage is increased by 25%, up to 125%. These bonuses are lost if Mind Break fails to hit a hero, or if Belial dies.

Q: Thoughtshatter - Mind Break's Conduit explodes into energy .75 seconds after firing its psionic blast, dealing 190 damage and silencing all heroes hit for 1.5 seconds.

Active: Veiled Magi - Summon a Veiled Magi at a target location. After 4 seconds, if Belial is in range, the Magi casts a spell that heals Belial for 75% of the damage he took over the last 4 seconds. Veiled Magi can be cast as an Illusion using Deception.

Upgraded heroics continue to focus on being either multi-target or single-target focused. Hell to Pay opens up some ability to pull off some cascade situations. Madness Returns has high utility and can get you out of a fight going south, or be faked to take your opponents by surprise.

R1: Witness my True Form - Belial can now hold Overwhelm at maximum charge for up to 3 seconds. Every hero hit by Overwhelm reduces its cooldown by 15 seconds, up to a maximum of 75 seconds.

R2: Body Snatcher - Reduce Demonic Possession's cooldown and mana cost by 50%. If Belial's Mind Control target is killed while he is still Mind Controlling them, he gains health equal to the amount of health the target had when they were first possessed.

E: Hell to Pay - Increase hellstrike's range and explosion radius by 25% and reduce its cooldown by 4 seconds. Takedowns refresh Hellstrike's cooldown.

B: Madness Returns - Belial's Hearthstone channel duration is reduced by 50%. Belial can cast his hearthstone as an illusion, granting him stealth and invisible for 20 seconds or until he moves.
_{It grants him these effects only AFTER the 4 second channel is complete.}

3/9/2020
-Put the cleaving talent from Level 7 onto the 'auto attacks heal' talent at level 1, as the former effect seemed only useful when paired with the latter. In turn, I moved the original armor effect from Ichor Claws to Level 7, improved the armor to compensate, and added a way to get increased or decreased value from the talent based on your ability to land Hellstrike.
-Added a note at the top stating how much inspiration was taken from the original Reddit post.

19/9/2020
-Lowered the silence duration of Mind Break. The payoff of landing Belial's abilities needs to be very high, but 1.25 seemed a bit much.
-Level 7 W talent renamed to Thoughtshatter with more streamlined functionality. Taking the talent returns the removed .25 second silence time.
-Lingering Madness changed to be more consistent, allowing the talent to only proc once per cast, but at full power rather than half.
-Belial by Fire renamed to Mind Killer. Simplified to just be a normal percent damage move.
-Attempted to add ranges. Range numbers are one of the least learnable aspects of HotS, since they're referenced very infrequently in rules text, and they've been moving towards expressing range increases in terms of percentages. I may later just describe the ranges in terms of other abilities.

15/10/2020
-Returned the silence duration of Mind Break back to 1.25 seconds after looking at all the other Silences in the game. Most of those are much longer, but are riskier due to being close-range. Belial's isn't risky, but is instead hard to land, so the trade-off is justified.
--I kept the additional .25 second bonus duration on Thoughtshatter, for a total of 1.5 seconds of silence time. A net buff for Belial.
---This required Lingering Madness to be changed to a talentless blast, as otherwise the synergy between the two would turn Lingering Madness into a must-pick for players who take Thoughtshatter.
-Added a line to Lord of Flies to prevent it from triggering its own effect. However I am now looking to rework the talent entirely, as an issue I was aware of but brushed off is becoming harder to ignore - namely that it gives away whether or not the move was an illusion when using Hellstrike. I want the move to be a tool that sustains Belial while in the thick of things, without being too troubling to deal with.
-Level 1 healing talent, Veiled Magi, has been adjusted to just give one big heal, as otherwise it would be obvious which version is real when cast as an illusion, just based on when Belial is healed. It also makes the payoff and counterplay more interesting.
-A line added to Deceiver's Wrath to clarify its relationship with charge-based talents.
-Added some minor clarifications and corrections.

26/1/2021
-Changed Deceiver's Wrath (20) into an activated ability.


28/09/2023
BRUISER REWORK.
A rework aiming to really bring together Belial's gameplan, and force him to get into dangerous situations more often.

• Health has been increased from 1900 to 2276.
• Basic attack damage has been reduced from 177 to 127.
• Deception's cooldown has been increased to 8 seconds and it now refunds the mana it used.
• Demonic Flare has been removed.
• New basic ability: Tempt Fate. A move that's more unique to Belial, and has a more uniform counterplay, as simply standing still will make the move impossible to hit.
• Mind Break has been moved to Q, and is now a weaker move with a faster detonation time, but less range. It also self heals instead of Silencing.
• Hellstrike's range and power have been greatly decreased, and the move now stuns baseline. It now has a channel time of 1 second, up from .75 seconds, and its cooldown has been increased from 10 to 14.
• As he's now a Bruiser, Overwhelm has been adjusted to grant Unstoppable, but it can no longer be cancelled. Once you start the channel, you MUST release the ability, and it'll be done for you after 3 seconds. Additionally, the move now improves its damage and stuns in increments, to give the move a more consistent feel.
• Demonic Possession now slows the target by 50%. Before there was an element of fairness to its 'free pick' potential because it required a squishy to get right in an enemy's face. The 50% slow now makes it a coin flip as to who will be killed, based entirely on which team gained the most ground.
• Belial's talents have been completely overhauled.

6/11/2023
Updated the wording on a number of talents.

17/11/2023

• Lunacy has been modified to instead reduce its cooldown while your abilities aren't on cooldown, rewarding more deliberate use of illusions rather than ability spam.
• Level 16 talent Veiled Magi has been streamlined, now working like a mini Dehaka Heroic, just on a hero less capable of using it, and with more counterplay.