Deadly poison (D): Increases the damage of your Venomous Attacks to 20% additional damage over 4 seconds
Crippling poison (D): Venomous Attacks slows enemies by 5% per hit, stacking up to 3 times
Wound poison (D):Venomous Attacks reduces incoming healing by 25%
Level 4
Ambush (W):
Level 7
Adrenaline Rush (Active): Increases your energy regeneration rate by 200% and movement speed by 30% for 3 seconds
Expert Stamina (Passive): Increases your maximum energy to 140
Garrote (W): Your backstab silences the target for 0.75 seconds
Rupture (E): Kidney shot deals 200 (+4% per level) damage over 7 seconds
Level 10
Shadowstep (R):
Level 13
Vanish (Active):
Level 16
Vicious Strikes (W): Successful Backstab increases the damage of subsequent Backstabs by 10% for 5 seconds
Evasive Maneuvers (Q):Casting Fan of Knives gives attacks a 50% chance to miss you for 3 seconds
Mark of Blood (Active): Marks a target for 7 seconds from a long range, granting sight. Dealing damage to the target consumes the Mark, healing you for 30% of your HP over 6 seconds
Level 20
Shadow Dance (R): Increases Shadowstep range by 40%, reduces energy cost by 10, and grants an additional charge
Choking Bomb (R): Smoke bomb radius increased by 20% and targets caught by the detonation are also silenced for 3 seconds
Venom Coated Blade (D): Activate your trait to cause your next ability to deal 50% additional damage over 10 seconds. Your trait is disabled for 10 seconds after using this ability
Fleet Footed (Passive): Permanently increase your movement speed by 20%
With this hero, I tried to make her as fun as possible and fit her into the current "stun/burst" meta as much as possible to make her relevant right off the bat. All the while, staying true to her classification as the "assassination rogue" from WOW. After considering including some demonic influences (since she was at some point possessed by the the demon "Kathra'Natir") I decided against it since it would make her playstyle too similar to Illidan
Despite her classification as a melee assassin, her damage is mostly ability damage. This is important because talents such as block have reduced effect against her, but talents such as spell shield and Illidan's sixth sense have increased effect on her damage.
I do have a definite direction that I aimed for with her playstyle and even have a few builds planned out with these talents. She would be played as a mobile burst assassin, with the option to spec into strong damage-over-time effects. Her damage is largely single target and frontloaded (she is restricted moreso by energy regeneration than actual cooldowns). The lack of stealth means she has to play extremely careful since her HP pool is low and she doesn't have access to many of the defensive options that other melee assassins do. Although, in return she possesses burst stronger than Nova, a stun, and the option between speed and mobility or a strong teamfight ultimate.
Builds/Playstyles
Early Game
Valeera is at her weakest in the early game. Her waveclear from level 1 is fairly decent, especially if she chooses to pick up Siphoning knives on level 4. Although, with no defensive options or mobility she is very suceptible to being bullied in lane by heroes with strong range/poke, and she can also not stand toe to toe with heavier melee assassins such as thrall/butcher.
Mid Game
Post level 10 Valeera is finally starting to pick up speed. At this point she is very strong for initiating ganks. Shadowstep + kidney shot from a bush is almost instantaneous and unavoidable unless the opponent is aware of your presence. This is where many teamfights over objectives are starting to happen and you can play as the initiator on the team. If the enemies are trying to disengage you can Step/kidney and stop them right in their tracks, allowing your team to follow up with more stuns/damage (lunar blaze/gravity lapse)
Once you start to hit 13/16 you can play a lot more aggressive with the safety net of your defensive talents such as Vanish and Evasive Maneuvers. As the melee assassin it is often your job to set up kills and engages. Making good use of Kidney shot is extremely important here. 1 second is a long time in this game and can allow your team to easily burst down a target who's out of position.
Late Game
Late game is where you are at your most powerful. Unfortunately though, this is when many other heroes are also at their most powerful. Poke damage is going to be the bane of your existence at this point. Your low health pool will not withstand many multishots/chain bombs/blizzards so you will have to choose your positioning very carefully. You are not a frontline assassin such as butcher/kerrigan/thrall, you are not a fully stealthed flanker such as zeratul or nova, you are a unique hybrid combining of the two.
Abilities In-Depth
Fan of Knives (Q)
This is, in it's most basic state, your waveclear ability. The fairly short cooldown allows you to spam it often to clear waves (as long as your energy allows it). It's damage is slightly lower than Zeratul's cleave, but with the benefit of a larger range (the radius is just under the basic attack range of most ranged heroes, about the same as Rexxar's attack range), and apply your trait
Depending on which talent you spec into at level 1, this can be very important in a teamfight. With the range increase on 13 you can keep your trait active on the entire enemy team for a prolonged period of time, which can slow them, deal damage, and reduce incoming healing (depending on your talents).
Balance Issues
The balancing and tooltips is definately a work in progress and I appreciate feedback on things that may be overpowered (I probably have overlooked something). To balance her, I compared her to characters that we already have that perform a similar role.
Afterword
I doubt many people made it this far down, if so then congratulations you have won my undying love! <3
I spent maybe 5 hours on this (yeah, I get really into things), so I'd really appreciate any feedback you guys can give me. Thank you again for reading :)
Hi,
interesting concept, made several myself so i know how much it takes to complete a full-one and how satisfying can be a comment to reply to... so here i am :)
First of all double check everything you've written, there may be some errors (for example E CD is 10 sec on the skill but you state it is 12 sec on description)
Other than that my humble opinion is that her Trait and its talent are a bit overtuned right now, it's literally a truckload of dmg and the -25% heal at lvl 1 is crazy. Tone down numbers imho.
I would also increase the cost of her W if it is going to have a 1 sec CD, something along 75 mana would be approriate also because her overall kit is very cheap to cast and spam everywhere. You either increase CD, lower dmg or increase costs. Your choice.
Ok thank you so much for the response I kind of forgot about this for a few weeks haha. I should probably take a look back over the guide since I pretty much just wrote it and hit publish without really proofreading (most of the time was spent on the visuals lol). The trait is meant to be a weak version of Lunara's trait (I actually came up with it before she was released) and through the talents you can adapt your poison to what you need. It's not meant to be her damage it's just a small DOT that mainly exists for utility. Perhaps the -25% heal would stack 5% per hit?
The numbers probably need some tuning but it's sort of hard to do that when I can't physically test the hero out myself lol. I got most of the number ideas from other heroes and did some theorycrafting on how her burst should work.
But yeah, thanks again for the response and I'll definately be looking over it again. I also have some new concepts I'm working on. I lay awake at night thinking about this stuff anyways I might aswell write it down lol!
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interesting concept, made several myself so i know how much it takes to complete a full-one and how satisfying can be a comment to reply to... so here i am :)
First of all double check everything you've written, there may be some errors (for example E CD is 10 sec on the skill but you state it is 12 sec on description)
Other than that my humble opinion is that her Trait and its talent are a bit overtuned right now, it's literally a truckload of dmg and the -25% heal at lvl 1 is crazy. Tone down numbers imho.
I would also increase the cost of her W if it is going to have a 1 sec CD, something along 75 mana would be approriate also because her overall kit is very cheap to cast and spam everywhere. You either increase CD, lower dmg or increase costs. Your choice.
Beside these stuff i find it very cool, GJ
The numbers probably need some tuning but it's sort of hard to do that when I can't physically test the hero out myself lol. I got most of the number ideas from other heroes and did some theorycrafting on how her burst should work.
But yeah, thanks again for the response and I'll definately be looking over it again. I also have some new concepts I'm working on. I lay awake at night thinking about this stuff anyways I might aswell write it down lol!