Hey everyone. This is my first go at creating a hero, just something I had in my mind for a while. Thought it was time to share this with you others, so here you have it: Chromie.
Chromie has been my favourite dragon since day one, first and foremost because she is adorable in her mortal form (gnomes <3), and also because of her charisma and personality. I first came to think about the idea of putting Chromie in Heroes of the Storm when I was doing the legendary quest in Draenor, where Chromie takes on the role as a healer when you are fighting Kairozdormu's ghost. Reversing time to heal others seemed like a good idea, so I expanded the idea a little bit!
Chromie's function as a support hero is first and foremost as a healer. The keyword to her playstyle: timing! She has no damaging abilities, but in turn her abilities have a significant impact on nearby heroes. Her style encourages group play rather than solo play, due to her trait and her talents that benefit other heroes more than herself. Her main job is to make sure that her friends don't expire by increasing their health and mana regeneration while slowing enemies down. Some of her talents and her heroic abilities can turn her into a very different hero, giving her the ability to help other heroes burst down enemies with strong enhancements to their abilities through cooldown reduction or movement/attack speed increases. She also has a little survivability thanks to Alter Time and some of her talents, making her a fairly robust hero!
Note that the numbers I've used aren't final, and are definitely subject to change if the abilities are too strong or too weak. Undo Wounds is an ability I'd certainly want to keep an eye on, its potential is ridiculous if you happen to take a lot of damage before Chromie casts it on you, but it is weaker if you haven't taken any damage and is much more difficult to use than Uther's Holy Light by comparison.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the abilities and talents! Thank you for reading!
Heroes of the Storm Build Guides
I'm really happy with Blizzard for this, and because Chromie is finally joining us in the Nexus, I'm going to shut this concept down. I'm a little bummed out that I didn't get it quite right, they made Chromie an assassin which I personally think isn't the right fit for her, but she looks like a really fun character to play, so... can't complain, really!
I was kind of surprised to see some of her talents were eerily similar to some of my own creation, perhaps most notably the "Bye Bye!" talent, which had some similarities with the old Hurry Home talent, which made the hearthstone an instant cast - pretty close to 75% that can't be interrupted! Timewalker's Pursuit was also a talent I almost nailed, at least I got the name right! Overall, my approach to Chromie was heavily based on the concept of time and timing, while Blizzard's Chromie is more focused around... well... hourglasses and sand.
I'm really happy for all the votes this thread has been given and I really appreciate all the feedback I've gotten. I have a ton of unfinished and unpublished concepts coming up soon, so I hope you enjoyed this concept, and more importantly, I hope you'll enjoy my future concepts!
Thanks all!
- Everpyre
The choice of Chromie is pretty unusual but many World of Warcraft players know her and she is (was? will be?) pretty charismatic, which makes her a nice addition to Heroes of the Storm. I can already imagine the funny quotes Blizzard will use for her.
I also think the time mage support is nice, even though it reminds me of Zilean from League of Legends.
You try to focus on the concept of time spells and I think it’s a good call. That gives identity to the hero. Players remember heroes who have a strong identity. What is Jaina in Heroes of the Storm? She’s a frost mage: every single spell she casts has blue effects and slows units. What is Chromie? She's a time mage: every spell she casts revolves around speed or slow or time travel. You’ve done a good work on that too.
Abilities
I have some mixed feelings about her abilities :
Trait - it’s basically a 100% uptime Lili passive and adds a group buff. In other words, it’s too strong. Also, the movement speed is totally understandable for a time mage but health and mana regen is a bit weird. But in my opinion the real flaw of this trait is that it doesn’t really add any gameplay: you just have a solo buff and a group buff and you’re happy to have it.
You could for instance make the group buff stackable over time (+5% regen per second up to 25% secs) in order to have it you would need to stick to your teammate (hint: the enemy can also try to “un-stick†you to make you lose all stacks). Or maybe a buff proportional with the number of heroes around you (5% per hero around you, 25% max) which would add a risk/reward for positioning (risk=being too close to the frontlane, reward=higher regen for your team).
Q - interesting spell which affects how you, your teammates and the enemy team will play around it. However I think the cooldown is too long for a healing spell and too short for a defensive spell. 8 secs between two heals leaves a huge window of vulnerability, not to mention she lacks other healing tools (like group healing). The defensive component could be made weaker but if it’s too low you’ll lose the identity of the spell.
W - I like the idea of altering enemy’s cooldowns, it may be too strong against mages, but it’s okay if it becomes her core counterplay (like Lili counterplay AA-based assassins with Blind or Brightwing counterplay channeled abilities with Polymorph) so I think it’s a fair tradeoff.
E - I’m not sure about this one, it’s definitely good to have a juke spell but from my experience you can not make cool jukes if you don’t have a movement spell (e.g. charge or dash) to play around it.
R1 - very nice idea for adding a group buff which (unlike WoW) is not a clone of Bloodlust. The cooldown reduction is awesome but helps mages more than AA-based assasins, but again I think it’s okay to give different strengths or weaknesses to different heroes. The movement speed looks like the level-20 Shadowstalk upgrade of Tyrande. Maybe you could replace the movement speed by mana reduction because spamming spells go along with spending mana. But then the talent would look like a group-wide Icy Veins (Tier 5 talent for Jaina). Not sure if that’s a good thing.
R2 - can be interesting but looks like a super-Q in my opinion. You say it’s not too strong but I have to disagree: you throw a Jaina into a teamfight, she is unkillable for 4 seconds (which is a lot), then she gets a 4-seconds DoT that is supposed to kill her => Ice Block => GG. With that said, it would allow synergies between heroes, which is a good thing. You could solve this by writing something like “the damage from Time Stop can not be negated by damage reduction spells†but exceptions like that are not natural, and unnatural is not fun (most of the time).
Mount - while I do like the idea of the dragon transformation (like Countess Kerrigan transforms into a bat when she mounts) and I like the usage of a dragon to move faster like in WoW, I think that the dragon model will be too big which will look weird (not to mention hitbox issues) and it’s abnormal that Chromie loses her dragon form when being attacked because it’s a mount (hint: in the Warcraft universe it’s the other way around, i.e. dragons use their dragon form to fight).
Talents
I won’t go into all of the talents because it would take me too much time to write and too much time for you to read (and unless you’re a friend of Chromie, we have no control over time) so I’ll just throw a few questions.
What happens if someone picks Have we met yet? (Tier 2) without Time Bomb (Tier 1)? As a rule of thumb, one may never require a previous talent to pick a new talent (except heroics). Also, I think attaching a Time Bomb to a spell called Slow is a bit weird, but maybe that’s just a naming issue.
Timewalker’s Pursuit (Tier 1) is just a more powerful version of the equivalent talent from other champions that I know of (either Mana regeneration of 0.1 per globe or Health regen of 1.5 per globe). And support heroes usually don’t need to scale health regeneration with globes because they are supposed to heal themselves thanks to the mana regeneration from globes (with a few exceptions like Brightwing or Lt. Morales).
Acceleration (Tier 1) is a weaker version of Forward Momentum (Tier 3 of other heroes), granted you can AA more often than casting spells. You only get the advantage of using this ability 2 tiers earlier, but since heroes usually struggle with mana early-game, I think this talent has very little use.
All in all you have clearly worked a lot on these talents, there are some very good ideas but some quirks as well. Unfortunately iterating over all combinations is a very long process so I can not say how much work you have left. You’re on the right track, though.
Damage
I honestly think having non-damaging basic abilities is an issue. I’m totally okay with playing support heroes who can not shove lanes or clear mercenaries as quickly as assassins or specialists, but having not a single spell is boring. Imagine you’re about to kill a hero, what will you cast? Huh, spam W so you can slow him while you AA, it’s a bit meh. The grave golem is attacking you base, what will you cast? Huh, nothing. I think you get the point. In my humble opinion all heroes need to have at least one damaging spell, even if it’s a weak one.
I’m not sure how to do it, though. You could give Time Bomb to W for free (instead of a talent), but it would look a bit weird. You could change E because I am convinced E will not be very interesting or funny without another movement spell.
Another drastic change would be reworking the hero as follows:
Trait would be a stance for Chromie: Speed Up or Slow Down, which improves basic abilities.
During Speed Up, abilities are rather offensive. During Slow Down, abilities are more defensive. This way you can have up to 6 basic abilities. For instance, Q under Speed Up could provide the heal, and Q under Slow Down could provide the buff. This would be a stance (like warrior stances in WoW), not an on-use trait (like Kael'Thas in HotS).
It would solve many things:
- separate Q’s heal and Q’s buff,
- add a movement ability to make E really shine,
- add a damaging ability even without talents,
- add another healing tool which she probably lacks (group healing? shield?).
It could also open new talents, e.g. :
No Time to Waste - After switching between Speed Up and Slow Down, the next basic ability will have both Speed Up and Slow Down effects active.
However it would put the hero into a stance-dancer, which may not be what you want.
That also opens several questions: is there a cooldown to switch between stances? Does the switch cost mana? Do basic abilities share the same cooldown between stances or do they have separate cooldowns (like Nidalee from League of Legends)? Do heroic abilities interact with Trait?
Dragon
I think the other aspect (doh) that could be changed is the dragon form. The fact that you lose your dragon form after taking damage goes against the way dragons are in Warcraft.
For instance it could be heroic. Either a new heroic ability (replacing R1 or R2) or an improved version of heroics (level-20 talent?). Heroic transformations fit well with the game, it would match with the ability to fight as a dragon (unlike being bothered by fights as a dragon with current design), and it could provide gameplay changers (use the huge hitbox to block heroes? allow the dragon to fly over walls? etc.). However, I would hate to see a crippled dragon.
Arthas’s Sindragosa is a good example of using a badass dragon: she descents, freezes everything in a long path, and flies away until next time.
On the other hand, I hate the dragon form of Shyvana from League of Legends. When activating her ult it’s awesome… for one second or so. Then she crawls with her broken wings for several seconds (or even minutes with the right build). They tried to explain it with the lore, but despite their efforts I think it just doesn’t work.
So the challenge would be to include an heroic ability which looks great but not imbalanced. Unfortunately I haven’t put a lot of thought into it so I don’t have any specific details to share. Maybe it’s just a silly idea.
Also, regardless of the dragon heroic ability, it could be nice to explain lore-wise why Chromie is not fighting with her dragon form 24/7. But the game already had other discrepancies like that (why Illidan leaves his demon form? Why Tassadar becomes an Archon without another templar? etc.) so I guess it would be acceptable for Chromie too. Also, just like Illidan can transform permanently into a demon at level 20, it could be something done for Chromie at level 20 as well.
Keep up the good work!
You've made a few good points here, I'll talk about some of it here and I'll make some changes based on your feedback.
First off, the dragon form. It's not listed in the mount description, but you do not get dismounted when you take damage in your dragon form (similar to how Rehgar's ghost wolf functions). It currently gives mounted movement speed, but that might be too much if you can't be dismounted. And the core fantasy of how dragons work in Warcraft is that they are stronger in their dragon form, and that isn't really well reflected in this mount. A change I'll be exploring is a mount more similar to Falstad's trait (tailwind) which increases movement speed by a flat amount in dragon form and still allows abilities to be cast. Ultimately, the dragon form isn't really a core part of Chromie's kit, as she's a support hero that spends most of her time rejuvenating her allies rather than rampaging in her dragon form. A visual effect of her dragon form during Time Warp could be a good way to give us some of that dragon action without changing too much.
Chromie's healing will see some changes. First of all, her trait is going to change drastically, but her main healing ability is not going to see a cooldown reduction. This is because Chromie's utility is already very strong, and what she's really lacking is a strong source of healing outside of her Q. I would compare her toolkit more to Tyrande than other support heroes like Morales or Uther - Tyrande also only has one source of healing (beside talents and heroics). Buffing her Q (which is potentially stronger than Uther's holy light or Malfurion's regrowth) isn't the answer, it's her trait that needs some reworking, or rather, buffing. I don't want to make Chromie more complicated than she already is by changing her trait to an active one.
Slow is the next to go under the axe. I'm going to bake Slow into the new spell, Time Bomb, which will be slightly different from how the current version of the time bombs in the talents work. Think Gazlowe's Deth Lazor combined with Moonfire.
Alter Time could see some changes. I'm going to keep it, though, because it's different and interesting compared to most other abilities in the game. You can use it both to juke, bait and chase your enemies. Ultimately it's not meant as a conventional escape tool, but it gives Chromie more control on the battlefield. It'll be difficult to use properly, but when you get the hang of it, alter time is going to be a great tool. I will change some talents for it so it'll be easier to use.
Some talents will see some reworking. I'm rearranging a few tiers, there will be some buffs where they're needed. Thematically it won't change much, however.
This new damage build should not interfere with the former possible builds (most notably the anti-mage build and the healing build). It's now up to you to choose the right one when playing!
Additionally, there were some tweaks to talents that were a little over/underpowered. Some talents were reworked or removed entirely. See changelog for more information.
Slow
When Chromie casts slow on you, your cooldowns will regenerate slightly slower: in essence, your abilities will only tick for 0,75 every second. This means that for its 4 second duration, your abilities will take 1 second longer to recharge. With its new effects from the new talents, it will become far more powerful against mage builds, as its duration can be increased by max 3 seconds with the Slower talent, and each ability cast while you are afflicted by Slow will no longer recharge until the effect has ended.
Time Stop
Time Stop basically makes you unkillable for four seconds, and when its duration ends, you will take 50% of all damage taken over time. This puts on somewhere on par with Kharazim's Divine Palm, where you are protected from death and will heal a large amount if you are killed for its duration. While this might sound overpowered, consider that if you take 200% of your maximum health during Time Stop, you will still take 100% of your maximum health over 4 seconds, and you will die unless healed. I don't think this ability is particularly overpowered, considering you can still be CCed while it is active, and that you take a large amount of damage over time afterwards. The level 20 talent is very powerful, on the other hand, where it's basically a divine shield for 4 seconds, and 2 seconds on nearby heroes, minus unstoppable and movement speed bonus.
Time Warp
Time Warp is basically the mage version of bloodlust. The ability is very situational, but extremely powerful when you use it correctly. It basically functions like Gazlowe's cooldown-reducing scrap. Rather than reducing a cooldown by 1 second every second, it reduces all cooldowns by 2 seconds every second. Let's say you use Undo Wounds while Time Warp is up. Rather than having a normal 8 second cooldown, it will essentially have a 4 second cooldown. Sounds pretty powerful, huh? Time Warp is not more powerful for short cooldown abilities. If you cast Alter Time during Time Warp, its cooldown will tick at double rate for the duration of Time Warp (10 seconds with level 20 talent), basically giving it a ten second cooldown. With the level 20 talent, this also affects heroic abilities, causing some of them to be very powerful indeed. Imagine Li Li with Kung Fu Hustle and Time Warp up. Cooldowns would basically be non-existant!
Have we met yet?
This talent has undergone some serious rework. It is now a spellshield you can give to other heroes. Even though it is available in level 4(!) it is not as strong as an actual spell shield, as it only lasts for 30 seconds and has a 60 second cooldown, meaning you can only use it on one hero at a time. It provides a strong alternative to healing talents in that same tier, while keeping Chromie's anti-mage theme going!
With her current design, Chromie has two very different playstyles: anti/pro mage and healing. The anti/pro mage revolves around using slow and time warp to slow enemies' cooldowns and hasten allies' cooldowns. The healing revolves around using undo wounds and time stop to rescue allies in need. Chromie doesn't do a lot of damage, but she's an excellent survivor and works incredibly well with a team!... except for Abathur, as he would have to be in Chromie's proximity to function.
As for Time Warp, with the level 20 talent it will effectively reduce the cooldown on heroic abilities by 10 seconds over 10 seconds. As it doesn't affect Time Warp itself, I'd say it's not particularly overpowered, also considering its long cooldown.
I'll remove the heroic ability reset! Probably going to give Chromie a somewhat shortened respawn timer instead, or perhaps a mass slow upon death. The suicide playstyle is completely intentional, sacrifice your healer for a huge burst of power and healing gives her an interesting new side.
It just isn't that great.
Especially compared to Time Warp, which is basically a better Bloodlust.
I like the idea of working her around ability cooldowns, but I guess you should change Slow to the following "Reduces mvt speed and ability cooldown by 25%".
I'd rather like Chromie to be an anti-mage character than an all-around-one. There, she counters Jaina (long cds), and can counter Illidan or the Butcher with 50% reduced AS.
Not sure if that is broken though, requires play in game.
I cannot not imagine Chromie suicides play by lv20, if they didn't pick Speed of light or Storm Shield.
*Tank engages*
*Chromie uses her ability, and put her in front of the enemy*
*Enemy kills her*
*Jaina burts down silly enemy team*
And resetting Heroic abilities cooldown though is too much.
I can't imagine the CHAOS of Two water elementals. Or two mosh pits. Or two sindragosa.
I think otherwise, she's balanced and could very well fit into the game.
Great job, there. :D
Other feedback I've received outside of the comment section will also see the light of day.
What if it could be cast on enemies or allies to freeze them in time, still allowing them to be attacked or healed but preventing the damage until the end of the duration. For enemies, the healing and damage would be counted into 2 separate pools and the difference is applied instantly. For allies, if the damage is greater, it's spread out over 4 or 5 seconds, while the healing is still applied instantly.
It would give her a way to make clutch saves on allies or help her team focus down enemies, both of which are desired on supports.
As for the W, you could increase the duration the 4 seconds base and add talents for increased duration and apply to enemy abilities.
One thing I did notice with the talents is "It's not your time" only helps if you also take "Time travel." Rolling those into a single talent would probably be a better choice, since otherwise you would have to always pick both.
"Have we met yet?" is also a bit confusing. Is it a block/spellshield with a single charge that only comes up every 60 seconds? Or does it prevent 50% of damage from a source for some duration? If it's the former, the cooldown should be much shorter or effect needs to be stronger, otherwise it would never be worth it. If it's the latter, specifying heroes instead of source greatly improves it's viability.
You also put in three combinations of talents that prevent chromie's death. Taking "It's not your time," "Time travel," "Hurry Home," and "Time and time again" means Chromie would almost never see a respawn timer. A talent called "Resurgence of the Storm" was removed during the testing phase because it was almost mandatory to take on every hero that had it. This combination of talents would likely have the same problem; even if their are other choices, nothing beats not being dead. I would say "It's not your time" and "Hurry Home" would be the ones to reconsider, as they are incredibly strong.
Finally, "Timewalker's Pursuit" contradicts the changes to Regen master and Conjurer's pursuit we saw in the most recent patch. Making it .75 health and .05 mana regen per second per orb would be more in line with the current iterations of those abilities (those particular number chosen due to being 50% of regen master and conjurer's pursuit current effect; could probably be higher without worries of imbalance).