Snotter Lord

[[S2]Nidhogg]

I deleted it in my original post, but I used the same template that he used - the one provided by Nome in a stickied topic about how to present a hero. My icons are not original and the image is a bread and butter snotter from the wiki site.

Edit: I guess if someone wanted to make unique icons and a nicely drawn/colored Snotter Lord for me that would be aces, but I expect S2 would do that if he goes the distance =)

[[DvI]Excalibur]

All right just making sure. Anyway, love the hero, t-up and approve for Top. Congrats.

[Nome]

Is there any particular reason recently banned user FiveAces used your topic formatting, icons and all? Or is it coincidental?

The formatting and icons are from my Deceiver suggestion, which I offered as a template here:
http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/sh...ad.php?t=10774

=P

[[AAOs]Flem100]

I´m on it as well but I agree with:

[QUOTE=Sufferr;159007]I just don´t like that you NEED to get the summoning skill first..
IMO that should change...


Something must be done I think

[Icebeerg]

i think snooper must be like geomancer in dota

this is amazing. i love it.

[[E]Artic]

Might be nice if Deadline gave you some move and attack speed even when you don't have any minions (it would still give you more for having more minions).

[[S2]Nidhogg]

Oh nice, they re-opened the poll.

Artic: Hmm, I don't think it's worth it - I mean when won't you have minions?

[quantum714]

He's already there, Armadon

[Somnolent49]

This is a really amusing concept, and I like all the skill ideas. I do have some balance concerns however.

1.) Why is this hero intelligence based? Thematically it doesn't really seem to fit, I mean he's a little critter that runs around dripping snot. Agility just seems like it would make more sense for him.

2.) If he is going to be intelligence based, then I think his mana costs need to be reworked. As it is, he has a 50 mana snare on a 12 second cooldown, a 50-120 mana summon on a 60(!) second cooldown, a 20 mana AoE nuke on a 20 second cooldown, and a 100 mana creep upgrade with a 30 second cooldown.

Judging by his skills, he is basically going to cast snare on a target, send his snotters in and autoattack until the target is low enough to explode the snotters. Because he will be autoattacking so much, and because his auras give him an attack and move speed boost, he will end up being a ranged int damage dealer along the lines of Puppet master.

By comparison, puppet master has a 195 mana snare with a 14 second cooldown, a 170 mana disable with 24 second cooldown, and a 250 mana ulti with 150 second cooldown. These are the mana requirements that a ranged int dps hero should be balanced towards.

3.) His snare seems a bit too strong. You have two seperate level 4 durations listed, 7 seconds and 5 seconds. I'm going to assume 5 seconds is the correct one and you forgot to change the other numbers. A 50% snare for 5 seconds with 800 range, 60 mana cost, and 12 second cooldown? That is a bit too strong. I would say lower the range significantly, Snotlord has a movespeed bonus already so he should have to get up in the enemies face a bit. Make it 400-500 range. I also feel that either the % snare or the duration need to be tweeked a little bit. The level 1 snare feels just fine, but it scales up a bit too much.

4.) This is a bit more of a flavor criticism than a balance one, but the snotter explosion from You're Fired doesn't feel, well, snotty enough. There should be some small snare component involved, say a 50% snare that fades to 0% over 2-3 seconds, along with a wonderful snot covered effect on the enemy heroes.

5.) I'm not quite sure I understand how the You're Fired skill and the Promotion skill work together. You're Fired says that upon using the skill, it detonates all of your current snotter minions. The Promotion skill says that it upgrades a snotter minion into an executive snotter, which leads me to think that it wouldn't be detonated upon activating the You're Fired skill. The promotion skill however says that the Executive snotters do additional damage upon being detonated. Do executive snotters get detonated in the AoE explosion, or not.

If they do, then the CD on promotion probably needs to be lowered. The 720 damage nuke that a level 4/3 snotter lord would have is huge, so I can't really see a snotter lord wanting to refrain from using his explosion, and it doesn't make sense to put in a skill which incentivizes him not to use it.

To be honest though, I think the snotter executives should not be detonated along with the minions. This leads to Snotlords having to choose between having more minions for their nuke, versus having more executives for their stacking attack speed aura. Two seperate, viable playstyles are thus introduced, and snotlords can mix and match between them a bit. This would also resolve the issue where the You're Fired ability and the Deadline ability don't really mesh. Instantly losing all your bonus movespeed and attack speed when you use your nuke seems a bit too weakening for the snotlord. Being able to drop from 5 minions/3 executives down to just 3 executives, however, would still leave the snotlord with a very sizeable move and attack speed boost.

6.) I'm not quite sure I understand how the promotion skill works. Does it passively increase the creep limit to 6/7/8, or do those increases only come about upon creating a snotter executive? I think going with the former would make a bit more sense to players.

7.) Making the snotter executives completely magic immune feels a bit too powerful. Doing so means that the only real counter to snotlord is a carry with a runed axe, or puppet master, because aoe nukers can't take down snot executives anymore, and that carry will have to run up into melee range and risk getting nuked. While there are other heroes which require someone to buy a specific item to counter them (jereziah and purge come to mind), I don't think it's something you want to actively encourage in the game. The stun immunity of his executives is also troubling.

I do agree that the snotters need to be a bit sturdier to aoe nukers though, so I think that, as a compromise, the executives should get a boost to magic armor. Something along the lines of 5/10/15, which would make them very sturdy against aoe nukes, but still completely susceptible to disables, and possible to nuke down, although it would take quite a few casts to do so.

8.) I want to clarify really quickly how the executive snotters aura works. It says that they have "a stacking 5%/10%/15% attack speed aura". Does this simply mean that it stacks with the snotlord's deadline aura, or that the aura stacks with itself, meaning if you have 3 snot executives you have 45% attack speed. I'm assuming that the former is true, as if the latter was true it would be ridiculously unbalanced. If so, you might want to change the flavor text to indicate that.

9.) The Snotter lord gains .3% mana regen with a snotter executive out at level 3. This is either way too low, or way too high. If .3% mana regen is being used in the same way that 50% mana regen from a scarab is, then it's a piddling amount. If, however, it's being used to mean .3% of MAX mana in regeneration, like the behemoth's heart, then it's a bit too much.

A snotlord built as an int dps hero will easily be breaking 1400 mana by level 16, which means he's getting an additional 4.2 mana per second, or 252 mana per minute. The snotlord, if he casts his abilities as often as possible, will be spending 640 mana per minute, or 10.6 mana per second, but that is pretty unrealistic as it would require him to be casting his snare every 12 seconds nonstop for 60 seconds straight, as well as promoting a new executive every 30 seconds, which is also a bit unlikely. A more reasonable number is 400 mana per minute, or 6.6 per second, which a snotlord with a hellflower is definitely already going to be regenerating well beyond.

If either the mana costs are raised, or the hero is changed to agi instead of intelligence, then the .3% number might become a bit more reasonable, but it seems like it would make balancing out the heroes mana costs way too much of a headache for the devs. Better I think to simply remove the .3% mana regen and just tweak mana costs and int growth to compensate, as the mana regen doesn't really seem very important to the concept anyway.

10.) With point 9 in mind, I propose a replacement for the mana regen. Give the snotter executives a magic armor aura which applies only to the lord and the workforce. Something along the lines of +1 armor per executive. That would necessitate tweaking the earlier magic armor numbers I proposed so that the executives weren't too hard to nuke, but would also help alleviate the weakness of the minions versus nukers.

11.) The snotter minions seem a little bit too weak at level 4. 400 health means that they will pop in 2 spells, and pretty much any aoe nuker will be able to wipe out the lord's minions instantaneously, getting a huge chunk of gold and xp. I'd suggest looking at the numbers on Ophelia's dominated creeps to get an idea of necessary health levels to be able to stay in combat for any duration, particularly beyond level 12 or so. Perhaps make the promotion ultimate passively boost the health of all minions.


I'm sorry for the giant wall of text i've created here, I hope you take the time to read my suggestions. I think this hero has alot of promise, which is why i'm taking the time to write this stuff at all, rather than just dismiss it as unworkable and move on like I do with most of the hero suggestions that get made.

[[S2]Nidhogg]

This is a really amusing concept, and I like all the skill ideas. I do have some balance concerns however.

1.) Why is this hero intelligence based? Thematically it doesn't really seem to fit, I mean he's a little critter that runs around dripping snot. Agility just seems like it would make more sense for him.

1.a) He is the brains of the operation, the "king" snotter, and as such he is pretty much the only intelligent snotter out there. Int just seems to fit, and his spells SHOULD be costing a bit to cast, based on frequency, not just individual mana cost.

2.) If he is going to be intelligence based, then I think his mana costs need to be reworked. As it is, he has a 50 mana snare on a 12 second cooldown, a 50-120 mana summon on a 60(!) second cooldown, a 20 mana AoE nuke on a 20 second cooldown, and a 100 mana creep upgrade with a 30 second cooldown.

Judging by his skills, he is basically going to cast snare on a target, send his snotters in and autoattack until the target is low enough to explode the snotters. Because he will be autoattacking so much, and because his auras give him an attack and move speed boost, he will end up being a ranged int damage dealer along the lines of Puppet master.

By comparison, puppet master has a 195 mana snare with a 14 second cooldown, a 170 mana disable with 24 second cooldown, and a 250 mana ulti with 150 second cooldown. These are the mana requirements that a ranged int dps hero should be balanced towards.

2.a) I thought I had originally done this already - reasonable mana costs are definitely in order. I had removed the cost of Your Fired! and upped everything else. I'll go over them all again. As a quick run down though:

1st Skill = 90/110/130/150, basically paying mana for an extra second per level.
2nd Skill = Flat 100 mana for all 4 ranks. / You're Fired! is no mana cost, which prevents weird interactions with the Lord being dead and the minions alive and detonating them.
3rd Skill = Passive
Ult = You want this to be a big cost spell because of the huge benefits you get casting it. 100/150/200.

3.) His snare seems a bit too strong. You have two seperate level 4 durations listed, 7 seconds and 5 seconds. I'm going to assume 5 seconds is the correct one and you forgot to change the other numbers. A 50% snare for 5 seconds with 800 range, 60 mana cost, and 12 second cooldown? That is a bit too strong. I would say lower the range significantly, Snotlord has a movespeed bonus already so he should have to get up in the enemies face a bit. Make it 400-500 range. I also feel that either the % snare or the duration need to be tweeked a little bit. The level 1 snare feels just fine, but it scales up a bit too much.

3.a) 5 seconds is the right duration. Range can def. be tweaked to be reasonable. 400 is less than his normal autoattack range, tried to keep them synergized.

4.) This is a bit more of a flavor criticism than a balance one, but the snotter explosion from You're Fired doesn't feel, well, snotty enough. There should be some small snare component involved, say a 50% snare that fades to 0% over 2-3 seconds, along with a wonderful snot covered effect on the enemy heroes.

4.a) I definitely agree, I hope the messy explosion will be goo filled and bring out the giggles you get from killing the snot pack at the easy neut spawn. As far as a snare - not really needed - or I should say if it was added their inherent movespeed would have to be reduced.

5.) I'm not quite sure I understand how the You're Fired skill and the Promotion skill work together. You're Fired says that upon using the skill, it detonates all of your current snotter minions. The Promotion skill says that it upgrades a snotter minion into an executive snotter, which leads me to think that it wouldn't be detonated upon activating the You're Fired skill. The promotion skill however says that the Executive snotters do additional damage upon being detonated. Do executive snotters get detonated in the AoE explosion, or not.

If they do, then the CD on promotion probably needs to be lowered. The 720 damage nuke that a level 4/3 snotter lord would have is huge, so I can't really see a snotter lord wanting to refrain from using his explosion, and it doesn't make sense to put in a skill which incentivizes him not to use it.

To be honest though, I think the snotter executives should not be detonated along with the minions. This leads to Snotlords having to choose between having more minions for their nuke, versus having more executives for their stacking attack speed aura. Two seperate, viable playstyles are thus introduced, and snotlords can mix and match between them a bit. This would also resolve the issue where the You're Fired ability and the Deadline ability don't really mesh. Instantly losing all your bonus movespeed and attack speed when you use your nuke seems a bit too weakening for the snotlord. Being able to drop from 5 minions/3 executives down to just 3 executives, however, would still leave the snotlord with a very sizeable move and attack speed boost.

Basically it works like this:

When you promote a snotter minion it kills that current minion and spawns an executive snotter under your control as a replacement. It has the same functionality of the snotter minions (being able to huddle and get fired) in addition to passive bonuses to attack speed and magic immunity, and increased HP. It also deals additionally damage when fired.

So basically you turn a small stick of TNT into a larger more durable stick of TNT, that helps you farm lanes and then when the time is right, sacrifices himself for the greater snot glory by being fired on top of a bunch of enemies.

6.) I'm not quite sure I understand how the promotion skill works. Does it passively increase the creep limit to 6/7/8, or do those increases only come about upon creating a snotter executive? I think going with the former would make a bit more sense to players.

6.a) Passively increases the cap by 1 at level 6, 2 at level 11, and 3 at level 16, for a max of 8 minions total. The increase comes by putting a point in the skill, not making a snotter exec.

7.) Making the snotter executives completely magic immune feels a bit too powerful. Doing so means that the only real counter to snotlord is a carry with a runed axe, or puppet master, because aoe nukers can't take down snot executives anymore, and that carry will have to run up into melee range and risk getting nuked. While there are other heroes which require someone to buy a specific item to counter them (jereziah and purge come to mind), I don't think it's something you want to actively encourage in the game. The stun immunity of his executives is also troubling.

I do agree that the snotters need to be a bit sturdier to aoe nukers though, so I think that, as a compromise, the executives should get a boost to magic armor. Something along the lines of 5/10/15, which would make them very sturdy against aoe nukes, but still completely susceptible to disables, and possible to nuke down, although it would take quite a few casts to do so.

7.a) I've been thinking about this and the unsynergystic way execs work with their lesser minions. How about a removal of the % attack speed, and replace it with a stacking passive magic armor bonus? The idea is that late game snotter minions are pretty fragile, hell early game a pyro can be a great counterpick to them, but you dont want to be discouraged from making them - so when you can start promoting them you get more passive magic armor bonuses. This will not make them completely broken and make magmus or behemoth cry, but will keep their viability.

What do you think?

8.) I want to clarify really quickly how the executive snotters aura works. It says that they have "a stacking 5%/10%/15% attack speed aura". Does this simply mean that it stacks with the snotlord's deadline aura, or that the aura stacks with itself, meaning if you have 3 snot executives you have 45% attack speed. I'm assuming that the former is true, as if the latter was true it would be ridiculously unbalanced. If so, you might want to change the flavor text to indicate that.

8.a) It wouldn't be stacking - think minotaur auras. Ophiela can have 3 minos but only 15% attack speed.

9.) The Snotter lord gains .3% mana regen with a snotter executive out at level 3. This is either way too low, or way too high. If .3% mana regen is being used in the same way that 50% mana regen from a scarab is, then it's a piddling amount. If, however, it's being used to mean .3% of MAX mana in regeneration, like the behemoth's heart, then it's a bit too much.

A snotlord built as an int dps hero will easily be breaking 1400 mana by level 16, which means he's getting an additional 4.2 mana per second, or 252 mana per minute. The snotlord, if he casts his abilities as often as possible, will be spending 640 mana per minute, or 10.6 mana per second, but that is pretty unrealistic as it would require him to be casting his snare every 12 seconds nonstop for 60 seconds straight, as well as promoting a new executive every 30 seconds, which is also a bit unlikely. A more reasonable number is 400 mana per minute, or 6.6 per second, which a snotlord with a hellflower is definitely already going to be regenerating well beyond.

If either the mana costs are raised, or the hero is changed to agi instead of intelligence, then the .3% number might become a bit more reasonable, but it seems like it would make balancing out the heroes mana costs way too much of a headache for the devs. Better I think to simply remove the .3% mana regen and just tweak mana costs and int growth to compensate, as the mana regen doesn't really seem very important to the concept anyway.

I agree the mana gain is wonky - it was something to put on the ult that directly impacts the Lord as opposed to strictly his minions. Not sure if it "adds too much" to the ult, making it confusing. Any help would be appreciative on it, because currently all his skills except deadline and his snare help his minions. Which isn't bad - that's what his playstyle is, but does he need candy to go with his ult? Or should his minions get all the goodies.

10.) With point 9 in mind, I propose a replacement for the mana regen. Give the snotter executives a magic armor aura which applies only to the lord and the workforce. Something along the lines of +1 armor per executive. That would necessitate tweaking the earlier magic armor numbers I proposed so that the executives weren't too hard to nuke, but would also help alleviate the weakness of the minions versus nukers.

10.a) I took this in mind when I answered Q 7 or 8...

11.) The snotter minions seem a little bit too weak at level 4. 400 health means that they will pop in 2 spells, and pretty much any aoe nuker will be able to wipe out the lord's minions instantaneously, getting a huge chunk of gold and xp. I'd suggest looking at the numbers on Ophelia's dominated creeps to get an idea of necessary health levels to be able to stay in combat for any duration, particularly beyond level 12 or so. Perhaps make the promotion ultimate passively boost the health of all minions.

11.a) I like the passive boost to all minions, but then part of the idea is you want to promote your minions to execs. There is no drawback to having more and more execs. And they get more HP.

I'm sorry for the giant wall of text i've created here, I hope you take the time to read my suggestions. I think this hero has alot of promise, which is why i'm taking the time to write this stuff at all, rather than just dismiss it as unworkable and move on like I do with most of the hero suggestions that get made.

Thank you so much for the critique, - read and reply back, I want this hero to happen

[willtsay]

excellent, hugely unique, although should he really be an int hero? (although i suppose if his stat alignment was str or agi he'd be imba xP

that and the .3% mana buff seems unneeded?? its not like he has high spam rate spells (aside from slow, that might be used twice in a team battle xP

EDIT: my bad didn't read carefully .3% mana for executive snotters xD

maybe give snotters more spell resist on promotion to being executive? eh just a thought cuz visage's revenants have spell resist

EDIT: FFFUUUU- Damnit fail reading once again. they haz teh magick immune

[TrueLolzor]

Support.

[[ToS]ImpBloody]

Should synergize well with bristleback as your partner =P

[totsuki]

I like the thematic idea, but overall it just seems like too much micro for my tastes. unless people find that fun, in which case go for it.

[sailorpallas]

i can think of only one problem...

everyone would want to choose him because of how awesome he is

[[NN]Evergoth]

How could I vote no to the murlocs of HoN?
After balancing I'm sure I would love it

[Democatai]

this sounds lika a great fun indeed

who dosen´t want to send there snotters after ppl ? ^^

raawr ! more snotters to the ppl ! =)

[Wraiven]

This had me lol'ing no joke. Love the concept and skill names haha.

[Zaknafain]

Awesome skills, this would be so fun to play! I really hope that this will be included at some point!