The Archon -- who needs permabash? Permahex FTW!

[VitaTimH]

The Archon


Int Carry / Chainstunner
Attributes:
STRENGTH: 16 (+1.5)
Agility: 20 (+1.9)
Intelligence: 24 (+3.4)

Movement Speed: 295
Attack Range: 550 (shoots a blue bolt a la DotA Razor)
Damage: 40-49
Armor: 2
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Background

Scattered throughout Newerth, there exist sects of templar that have completely isolated themselves from the rest of the world, with their sole purpose in life to be the worshiping of Sol. Now, in this final hour of need, Sol has personally commanded the leader of these monks himself to aid in the battle for Newerth. Known only as the Archon, this mysterious warrior wields the terrifying, limitless power of Sol himself, a power not even he can safely control.

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Abilities:

Intervention


The Archon sanctifies target enemy, reducing movement speed if they do not attack and damaging them if they do.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't!

Type: Target Enemy Hero
Mana Cost: 120 / 130 / 140 / 150
Range: 600
Cooldown: 16 / 14 / 12 / 10

Activation
Applies 4 charges of Sanctified to target enemy. 1 charge is removed upon attacking a hero. After 4 seconds, removes all remaining charges and slows MS and AS by 8% / 12% / 16% / 20% per charge. Additionally, target takes 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 damage every time a charge is removed through attacking a hero.

Visual
Target enemy flashes bright blue, with 4 small blue wisps circling them. Whenever a charge is removed, a wisp bursts with a slight sound effect.

Notes:
-This skill is twofold in its uses: one, it can be used early game to force the opponent to trade hits with the Archon, reducing the cooldown on his Forced Pacifism by 4, while also doing quite severe damage. Secondly, when used on an enemy that can't afford to stop to attack, this skill becomes a potent slow.
-One downside to this skill is that it isn't versatile; when used when the target isn't in a dangerous position, he can just attack twice for minimal damage and a minimal slow.

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Forced Pacifism


Type: Attack Modifier (toggleable)
Mana Cost: 50
Cooldown: 14 seconds

The Archon undertakes certain unorthodox measures in his journey to end violence, often forcefully transforming his target into a dove, the symbol of peace.

Peace and love, OR DIE!

Activation
Transforms target into a dove (hex) for 0.75 / 1 / 1.25 / 1.5 seconds. Attacking or getting attacked by an enemy hero reduces the cooldown by 1 second. This is an exclusive attack modifier.

Visual
Same as any other hex.

Notes:
-The Archon's scaling carry skill. This bash is similar to Chronos' with a slightly longer, scaling duration, no damage, and no hard stun.
-As the skill has a truly unwieldy cooldown but scales directly with your attack speed and the amount you're being hit, boosting your attack speed along with your survivability are key.

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Smite


Summoning the power of Sol, the Archon smites the enemy for their sins. The power of this spell increases drastically when the Archon or the target are severely hurt.

Type: Passive; Target Enemy Hero
Mana Cost: 80 / 120 / 160 / 200
Range: 500
Cooldown: 12 seconds

placeholder

Activation
Deals 60 / 100 / 140 / 180 damage to target hero. Half damage is dealt again and -3 second cooldown if you are below 50% HP, and yet again and -3 second cooldown if target was below 50% HP as well. Heals you for damage dealt.

Visual
A blue spark flashes on target enemy, and a blue beam shines onto the Archon.

Notes:
-This is the skill that will keep you alive. Maximum power is a 360 damage heal with a 360 HP heal on a potential 6 second cooldown; however, the mana cost is quite prohibitive, scaling up from a minimal amount very very quickly.

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Ultimate: Divine Martyrdom


The Archon overloads himself with Sol's power, transforming him into a burning effigy of holy might and gaining a wide variety of powers. However, the divine power is too much to control; as such, the Archon takes constant damage from the holy aura.

POWER OVERWHELMING!

Type: Target Self
Mana Cost: 125 / 175 / 225
Duration: 12 / 12 / 12
Cooldown: 45 / 35 / 25

Activation
The Archon gains +40 / 50 / 60 damage, attack speed, and attack range while dealing 40 / 50 / 60 Magic damage per second in a 600 AoE as well as 40 / 50 / 60 HP in nonlethal Superior Magic damage per second to yourself (goes through magic immunity but accounts for magic armor, maximum unreduced damage to self is 480 / 600 / 720). You may activate the skill again to end the buff ahead of time.

Visual
The HoN Archon is now a Starcraft Archon. Autoattack becomes much, much thicker.

Notes:
-Your steroid skill. With the added attack speed, you will be outputting hexes a lot faster, while the passive immolation encourages people to attack you. The tradeoff is the constant self-damage, which might not seem like much; however, as an extremely fragile carry, every single drop of HP is precious.
-Most of the Archon's skill ranges are balanced around his attack range; you might notice that the immolation is always larger than his attack range, and his healing nuke also scales up in range.

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Discussion:
While flipping hero ideas to myself, I felt that there really weren't many Intelligence autoattack carries (only Puppet and Dr. Repulsor… MAAAAAAYBE Vindicator). I was also thinking about interesting attack modifiers. We have slow on attack, bash on attack, greater bash on attack, lifesteal, splash on attack, silence on attack, etc. And these concepts just sort of combined to form the Archon. Essentially, the Archon is a straight up autoattack chain-pseudo-stunning glass cannon hero that also has a clutch, mana-intensive skill to keep himself alive.

I feel that the Archon would do best in a two-man side lane or in a trilane. All throughout the game the Archon is fragile; additionally, his first skill is at its most effective when there are allies to capitalize on whichever effect takes place. Additionally, while the Archon has a bash, there is no bonus damage associated with the bash and his damage output just really isn't that high. Additionally, with his low range and lack of spammability, there really isn't any point to sending the Archon mid.

Unlike Puppet and Dr. Repulsor, the Archon is still quite weak mid-game. His skills hit their maximum power around now, but his mana pool and attack speed are insufficient to allow him to start dominating alongside his two Int counterparts. Instead, the Archon is a true, rice-dependent hard carry. However, early game the Archon does have a powerful nuke and slow, which is nothing to scoff at. Later on in the game, Intervention will most often simply be a delayed 400 damage nuke.

The Archon outputs a good mix of Physical and Magical damage. I feel a good build for the Archon would be most heavily defense and attack-speed oriented, with damage coming second. Items that come to mind are a fast Helm, Steamboots, Shrunken Head, Nullstone, Demonic Breastplate, Barbed Armor, and Charged Hammer. Later, carry luxuries include Kuldra's, Hellflower, and possibly either Lifesteal of Harkon's if you're confident in your orb toggling skills.

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I tried pretty hard not to make him OP, but as usual he probably is. Criticism appreciated!

CHANGELOG 0:
Released

CHANGELOG 1:
Ultimate bonuses changed from 50 / 70 / 90 to 50 / 65 / 80; toggle is now a duration (toggle to 9 / 12 / 15 seconds), cooldown is 50 / 40 / 30. Radiance area of effect slightly buffed, while damage slightly nerfed.

CHANGELOG 2:
Added a 1% maximum HP per second damage to the ultimate and made the damage Superior Magic.

CHANGELOG 3:
Ultimate bonus nerfed to 40 / 50 / 60 while immolation effect buffed to 40 / 50 / 60; self-damage increased, duration set to a static 12. Cooldown -5.
Rescaled third skill to be a little less effective in terms of secondary effects and a little more effective when just casting it. Also made range static.

[Disco_Bison]

Placeholder.

Sorry I haven't been super useful with your other heroes lately, I've just had a lot to do lately and haven't felt up to being insightful. I will get around to reading this and all of your other heroes

[[MS]Nuclear]

wow, really cool hero, all awesome unique skills

[Dayew]

A nice hero overall.

I think 1st skill is too strong. 80% movement and attack slow is very strong. Change the attack speed debuff from % to just attack speed. You didn't include the duration of slows, so it's hard to say more about the skill.

2nd skill is creative and sounds fun. Hard to say anything about the balance at the moment; I think it's fine.

I suppose 3rd skill does magic damage and the heal is equal to that; looks fine.

Ultimate might need a bit of nerfing. I'd say halve or remove the +damage from it. That way you can keep the nice attack speed benefits for your 2nd skill without making the ability too powerful.

Again, a good hero with creativity in abilities. Only some work and tuning is required.

[VitaTimH]

For the first skill, it's not really an 80% slow, it's a diminishing 80% slow like Elec's ult. It lasts for 4 seconds. As of now I feel it's balanced. I'll adjust the ult though. Thanks for reading!

[Disco_Bison]

Finally posting

I like everything; it all seems to work pretty well.

I would change the way Forced Pacifism works though. I would make it a charge skill like Puppet's Whiplash, where every attack and every hit taken reduces the number by 1.

Even with that, though, I don't think it's a very strong skill. It's like a brutalizer on a ranged hero, except worse.

I would buff it to being a 1.25 second disable at all levels, and then make the cooldown amount(or charge amount if you like my thought) lessen every level.

The way it is now, you are going to probably get at the most two off in a fight. And for that, they need to focus you, which will probably kill you. I think a cooldown reduction of like 14/12/10/8 would be totally balanced. That's the equivalent of a 12.5% proc chance.



Also, I don't get the purpose of the third skill. Why does he have it? How does it really help him accomplish his goal? It's a nice nuke to be sure, but I don't see that it matches him all that well.

[Dayew]

Forced Pacifism isn't really that bad. I'll do some math:

Let's suppose your attack speed is 0.66 seconds per attack with ultimate on (so 1.5 attacks every second).
Let's also suppose you get hit once every second.

So every second, the cooldown is reduced by (1.5+1+1) = 3.5

14/3.5 = 4 second cooldown.

However, I can imagine the cooldown could drop below 3 seconds if you get tanky items and can sustain some damage.

[Disco_Bison]

Not really. People aren't going to attack you at all if they know it buffs your disable. Plus, even if you have high attack speed, it isn't realistic to assume that you will be able to get off more than three attacks at a time, one after another. Usually there is movement inbetween, etc.

[Dayew]

If people don't attack you, it is even better. That means you can sustain your damage longer; he is a carry after all. So if they attack your or not, it's win both sides.

[Disco_Bison]

I'm still hesitant. I mean i guess with a skill that potentially strong erring on the side of caution is a good thing.

[VitaTimH]

Haha thanks, your input is always welcome :P

I chose to use rather conservative numbers for the bash as of now because a stunlock on a ranged hero is a pretty unexplored concept, especially as he goes up to almost 600 range at level 16... and for a topic like permabash, I'd rather the skill be underpowered than overpowered haha. I don't really want to make Pacifism based on charges, partially because I want the skill to both naturally tick down as well as tick down even faster under certain conditions. Also, this stunlock is structured to come out less often but make more of an impact (1.5 seconds compared to 1 on Pest and Chronos, and Rampage's bash comes out even less). To be honest I made the cooldown static because I didn't want to run numbers to see what would be balanced in lower levels compared to higher levels -- I figured that static would also work as both you and your opponents attack slower early on.

His third skill is basically a clutch skill that keeps him alive. If used very well, that's a big nuke coupled with a big self-heal every six seconds, while you're probably being focused while being burned by your own ultimate. I can definitely see the Archon using a Shrunken Head as well as having lifesteal, and a self-heal would go a long way for keeping such a fragile hero as himself in play longer.

Some thoughts I floated around but cut due to power / complexity include having the first skill scale to late-game by making attacks do 50% reduced damage, while dealing the blocked damage to yourself instead of a static 100 damage nuke, but I ended up deciding it would be overpowered. I also considered a third skill that gave a kind of blade mail effect instead of a heal, but then I felt that this hero would be too much like Wraith and people would just super tank up. Thoughts? :P

[Dayew]

I took a new look at him and came to a conclusion, in his current form, there are two ways to play Archon: a carry hexer build with +attack speed and +damage items, and a tank build with hp and armor.

These two builds differ in notable ways, and which build is better is defined by his abilities.

Carry build with damage gearing is more risky and is dependant on good uses of Smite for maximum heals. With attack speed items like charged hammer and daemonic, you'll look at attack speed under 0.5 seconds per attack, and his hex will become a powerful tool. His considerable damage output will also make enemies attack him, because if you aren't killed, you'll kill them.

Tank build, however, requires only defensive items. Damage relies nearly completely on ultimate: built-in mock and free attack speed and damage. Because of hex losing cooldown while being attacked, and a large health pool and armor, you will probably not get attacked. Smite will feed his health a smaller portion. Rushing mock could also be a favourable option.

As I see it, his ultimate completely breaks the balance and forces tank build. The fact you get damaged for static amount while using ultimate and free +80 auto attack damage and attack speed result in tank items being the only option. Leveling fast becomes a must, and Archon is sent middle lane to grab levels and reach 16. While he gets his 3rd level ultimate, he can outcarry other team with his ultimate.

Having different builds is not a bad thing at all; it only makes the hero more useful. However, in my opinion, a tank built Archon is just too powerful for reasons listed above.

Possible fixes I'd suggest are removing the +attack damage from ultimate and changing the true damage taken to a %-based damage, so it hurts pure tank build more. (like 2% of max hp every second.)

The way in which you want Archon to go is of course under your decision; I just feel his ultimate is too strong and lessens the importance of his other abilites while encouraging boring gameplay.

[VitaTimH]

I actually designed the Archon to have a kind of tanky build in mind -- originally, his ult made him gain a lot of health and gain damage reflect, but I felt that made him a little too boring of a hero. I feel that he needs the damage, as just the attack speed and immolation would be a pretty crappy ult. Remember that the problem with int carries is that they don't attack particularly quickly or have that much HP. We all know how soft Chronos, Madman, etc. are... Archon has 0.5 less strength growth than either of them.

I agree with making the HP tick a percent, but I also want it to be very painful to use early game as well. I'll make it a combination of both.

Actually holy crap I just realized a dimension of his first skill that made him utterly op solo mid. Gonna change that right now.
EDIT: Actually it's not that op but it just makes him a really, really good mid. IDK if I should change it, it's very annoying but not gamebreaking. I realized casting your first skill on people in mid means that for four seconds, they can't last hit without taking high damage, and if they choose not to last hit, you have 4 seconds to autoattack harass the crap out of them. Not changing for now.

[Dayew]

If you think +80 attack speed and a damage aura equal to mock is bad, you might want to take a look at a hero named Madman. He's a squishy hard carry.

[VitaTimH]

Madman, however, doesn't kill himself very very quickly. I also feel that the new duration feels pretty solid as a burst ult. I actually based the ultimate on Broodmother's ult from DotA.

[VitaTimH]

Updated!