Concept originally created for Murraythehuman's Unofficial Hero Creation Contest around the theme of Harth Stonebrew, the dwarven innkeeper of Heartstone. It however never got a review.
My take was to create a
very difficult spellcaster around the "play cards" fantasy of Heartstone, being at the same time quite flexible in terms of plays possibilities and spell combos and quite rigid in terms of how you must anticipates each of your plays, the cards you will uses and can only play a limited amount of them in a given action.
Making him a support instead of a ranged DPS imposed itself to me during the design of the cards. Since draw/reset/combo mechanics could easily lead to infernal spell chains on a more damage-oriented hero and since I tend to appreciate utility spells. I tryed to keep a balance between utility, followup damages and PvE while adding some invocations for the favor.
My priorities while designing the basic and talent cards where to offer him great and varied combos and creativity potential between the different cards, spell variety and a few skillshots to valorise all sorts of skills, using iconic Heartstone cards but not the one already in HotS through other heroes and spells since they are often also iconic from WC3 and WoW and finally offering meaningfull build options and decisions depending on personal playstyle and game physionomy.
The goal is to have an hero that plan what will be it's next moove (pushing, depushing, jungling, ganking, joining a teamfight to bring damage, CC and initiation or utility and support...) and pick the right cards for it while roaming with Draw (D), use the spells/cards well during the action and then seek it's next play. While suffering from being relatively fragile, non-mobile, medium ranged and powerless between it's "turns".
Strenghs:
-Adaptability
-Surprise effect
-Synergies
Weaknesses:
-Fragile
-Mobility
-Long fights
Particular attention needed in order to balance well the hero:
-Readability from the player, ally and enemy point of view
-Strenght of some combos
Of course, such hero would need a lot of attention, playtest and work to be created given the number of spells to animate (even if I tried to limit the number of new animations needed for spells and the "play card" fantasy allow some animation recycling on Harth itself) and it's delicate balance. But since it's a fantasy build contest i assumed complex designs comparable to Deathwing where conceivable.
Heroes of the Storm Build Guides
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