[Playable] Bonechill

**Hubaris** · 08-05-2012, 09:07 PM

Bonechill

2.1

A frozen fragment of the past, the apparition simply known as Bonechill creeps along the fields of Newerth. A ghost that was once locked down in hell, it thawed out when the Hellforges started again. Now its ghastly chill can be felt by every spine, wherever war and winds blow; taking mana and using it to fuel his destruction of Legion souls.

Changelog

General

Gloom's Gate- Q

Consuming Miasma - W

Skulking Spirit - E

Abandon Hope - R

Hope you like it

Playable Hero can be found here (Version 2.0 Uploaded Currently)

**[EFL]Grangerer** · 08-06-2012, 02:58 AM

Hi,

just my 2 cents:

Q: There are several problems with this one. First, how does it decide to drain mana or deal magic damage? 50% luckchance or something else?
Second, if you manage to hit only one enemy int he area it is besicly a 4.5/5/5.5/6 second stun on a 17/16/15/14 second cooldown because you're not really able to walk if you get ministunned each 0.15 seconds for 0.1 second.

W: I like the idea. But 4.5 physical immunity is a lot in a team fight. On top of it it only has a 7 second cooldown. The second part could silence longer and remove more mana, if possible on another mechanic, because your mechanic will remove about 40 mana tops on a extremly well geared Doc Repulsor.

E: This skill is what takes him over the top. As you describe it is instant. The pure fact to you can instantly teleport every >21 seconds to an ally makes it overpowered. For example: Whenever somebody is in the fountain, you can teleport and heal for 5-8 second and get items. Or you can teleport to an allied healer.
About the second part. I think you need to buff the numbers. For example the next five attack of you and the target burn 20/30/40/50 mana or something along those lines.

R: I would make it single target and reduce the manacost. Don't get me wrong i really like that ability. Everything seems fine, just such an aoe could be to strong.

The strange thing about your hero is, that even though i find his skills to be rather strong/broken i would never pick this hero. His abilities don't really seem to add up. What was your supposed role for him. He feels like a ganker, because his abilities feel ganky but the current iteration is more like a very weak support. No harras (500 attackrange) no heal no nothing. I have no clue how to play/lane him.

**Hubaris** · 08-06-2012, 11:55 AM

Yea I actually should have been much more descriptive in my Tooltips than the way i explained it in OP (it was late though and I really wanted to sleep). Thank you for the feedback as it currently stands. A few points of interest:

Q actually doesn't stun every 0.15 seconds and isn't exactly random. There are two of the exact same affectors spawned, one with mana removal and the other with damage. And they simultaneously impact at every 0.3 seconds. What I meant to say is that if there are two targets there, it can split up randomly as to what you take. I really should fix that because it seems really bad when you look at it the way its written. Its also very easy to move out of when solo, despite the ministuns; include another target and you're good to go.

W was always a trouble for the duration. On a spell which is dispellable and shoves you and your team into a 300 area is probably sometimes more risk than reward. The area is smaller than Nomad's Sandstorm and easily makes you a target for a well placed Hammer stun and such. The spells disables mana regeneration only to stop a 0 mana target from surviving the R if they stand too close. As for the silence portion, I would have liked to buff it, but I would rather the skill have more uptime and be weaker in that regard than be down 70% of the time. I was trying to go with a Old Vindi like feel with the aura that it exudes, except its much more stoppable.

E has a 1 second cast. It was originally channeled, and I might make it so again. The spell actually stops all health/mana regen and stops you from buying items (when it works properly); another factor I didn't mention >.< . The numbers for the burn can quickly become very dangerous against certain heroes. As a comparison, Magebane deals 64 burn at max level, this does half that much but to 2 targets;so its reasonable on paper. Again, his strongest spell and most subject to change.

R was supposed to be 'that big teamfight ultimate' that we haven't seen in HoN in awhile. Reducing the mana cost in its current state makes it far too powerful when coupled with E and Q, and makes you able to autogank any hero across the map. I'm really adamant about making it AoE, and might put a Magmus like channel time on it if thats what is needed.

For your closing remarks, I agree; he is very strong. Its not a hero who can be picked in every lineup and work (Valk and Co.) nor is it a hero who has a defined role. Think of such great heroes as Dark Seer and Shadow Demon both of which have no real predefined role and are niche. I personally can see playing him mid with global gank opportunities, or support against a mana heavy lineup, or jungle with QW (okay maybe not jungle :P ).

Or maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic when it comes to niche heroes (I have a soft spot for them).

Thank you though for your really detailed input though

Edit: Fixed the Tooltips and added a channel back to E.

**Hubaris** · 08-09-2012, 03:37 PM

Added a channel to E. Fixed Impacts on Q so that they don't stack too much on one target making it unwalkable.

Bump for Feedback ! Just because its playable doesn't mean its done!

**[TECH]Gorb** · 08-09-2012, 04:28 PM

I would second the feedback that both W and R are excessively good. Excessively so. And they contain design elements which make for troublesome balancing (while retaining flavour).

Before I go on, I like this hero, I really do. The concepts are really neat.

Issues with Gloom's Gate (Q):

The writeup is still confusing, I'm not sure how you intend to clear that up. The numbers are iffy as well; 0.3 doesn't divide well into the scaling duration(s). I'd recommend rescaling the ability along the following lines:

Or even every 0.5 seconds (adjusting the mana/damage to suit) depending on playtesting.

Reasoning - cooldown reduction, for starters. Bonechill is an Int ganker. He shouldn't be hampered early game by high cooldowns as much as he is currently. However, lategame he shouldn't be able to spam things to great effect (relying on that point on utility through skills and pure damage output through items rather than damage through skills). Fixing the cooldown at a lower value buffs his early game and slightly nerfs his end game.

To account for this, the radius expands per level (a la Defiler's Grave Silence). This is so that as the game progresses and hero (and team) fights get larger and more common, this ability can maintain use (without being excessively strong in the laning phase by dint of being able to cover the entire lane). With regards to the range, if anything I'd buff it to 650 for harassment purposes (given his attack range), but more on that at the end of my post.

0.25 divides into the duration better, and is a minor buff at best. I'm not sure why your mana and damage values scale with different numbers; if anything I'd double the mana drain when accounting for damage. I still think this ability, when combined with a stun or an immobilise, can deal some truly horrendous damage. I'd urge you to consider nerfing the duration.

Issues with Howling Miasma (W):

I, um, don't know how to put this nicely

This ability is crazy out-of-whack good in ways that cannot be imagined. However, I want to confirm one thing. Does the Physical Immunity apply to Bonechill as well? If not, then it's probably far better than I'm thinking of.

Scenario #9,001: Bonechill sits in his team, is protected by whomever and throws out abilities. He can throw this one out after 3.5 seconds of downtime (assuming no Spellshards, though this hero doesn't really suit Spellshards). Whoever sits next to him (you can presume at least one hero is outside of the radius wrecking havoc in his or her own way) has nearly perma-Physical Immunity. If you pull this combo off while sitting on top of the enemy team (by way of Portal Keys, etc), they can't even cast many abilities of their own to counter-attack. This leads to a spectacularly effective ganking method with a coordinated team (yes, it will probably suck in pubs).

Do you see the problem? It grants Physical Immunity AND Silences enemies. The mana degeneration is a bit of an afterthought, I don't really see this impacting gameplay at all.

If the Physical Immunity doesn't apply to Bonechill, I would suggest removing the mana degeneration (functionally useless beyond preventing mana pots and/or Bottle) and changing the Immunity to a (moderate-to-large, scaling with level) bonus to Physical Armour instead.

If the Physical Immunity applies to Bonechill, remove it immediately and then I recommend the above changes regardless. Of course, it's your hero, but I really would think that it shouldn't apply to the hero himself.

Issues with Abandon Hope (R):

Potentially a game-changing ability that could completely wreck a teamfight. I consider it far too strong with too much utility, a bad combination. Upping the manacost to silly heights doesn't change the fact that this ability is, in my opinion, completely overpowered from a design standpoint.

Lose one of the two effects. Up the radius. Lower the manacost a bit (or just at levels 2 and 3 - 270/400/530 may be a good start).

Personally I'd rework it completely, along the lines of "deals Magic damage to each enemy target within the radius proportional to the difference between their maximum and current mana values". This would also make Spellshards a viable (and possibly amazing) pickup on the hero to boot. However that's just me pushing what I want you to do with the ability onto you. If you're intent on maintaining the design, I'd lose one of the two effects because having both basically means the ability can't fail.

General issues with Bonechill:

Has no base stats or stat progression, so I can't comment on those. Doesn't have base Physical Armour either, so I can't comment on how well he stands up to early-game harass.

I would say that his range is unnecessarily limiting - I'd bump it to 550 or increase the cast range of his abilities (specifically Q and R).

Hope my criticism helps you!

**Hubaris** · 08-09-2012, 07:54 PM

Thank you very much for the feedback. Every time I play with the hero, I find the Ultimate wants me to nerf it; but a small part of me keeps screaming no. As Grangerer said earlier, making it single target would probably be the best solution and I'm starting to agree with him.

Since we're on terms with the R; I want (nay, NEED) the effect to stay the way it is. Its such a strange mechanic that isn't currently in the game and the solution you proposed would make it just a Magebane Ultimate (somewhat). Maybe I'll play around with it becoming single target. It is stupidly strong; but the effect needs to stay to retain how it is as a skill. You brought some good points with it, so maybe making it single target would be best.

Howling (W) used to actually set his movespeed to 100 for the duration, turning him into a semi static ward and didn't apply the ability to himself. After seeing what you mean I think I will change it to no longer effect himself and remove the immunity altogether in favour of armour. Immunity is really strong. The degeneration was a relic and I'm probably going to remove it completely.

For Gloom I'm probably going to rescale it to an impact every 0.5 seconds to a random target and apply both the burn and the damage instead. Changing the cooldown to the way you described it seems logical. I personally don't like scaling areas, so I will compensate that by reducing the duration to a static amount (maybe 4 seconds or so). Right now it scales in too many ways and is very very nonlinear (like More Axes!).

I'm surprised you didn't comment on the E which is the one that usually gets the most flak.

Overall thank you very much for your input and I will probably do a 1.2 version with these adjustments.

EDIT: Version 1.2 is up and hopefully not as silly OP :P . Q was rescaled. W grants armor instead of immunity. and R is now single target to a hero with cooldowns and mana changed accordingly.

**[TECH]Gorb** · 08-09-2012, 11:40 PM

Q looks fine now. I thought the mana removal would be too much at first, but I applies /MATHS/ briefly and worked out that any reduction would make it useless. I like.

W is fine, though I'd make it explicit in the description that it doesn't affect Bonechill himself.

E . . . I like E. Heck, I love E. I find it hilarious. Certainly I don't think there's anything wrong with the design; perhaps the numbers may need tweaking slightly but that's what playtesting is for. It looks great to me.

R looks fine as well, got no issues with that anymore.

Thought about base Physical Armour and starting stats/stats progression?

**Hubaris** · 08-10-2012, 12:19 AM

Its all there now under General Tab. I was toying with the idea of making him get half armor, or full or none, so as of right now he gets nothing. There is no linger at all so clumping for physical armor does have its downsides for your friends.

I love E too, it seems strong on paper as a global teleport but the limitations to it make it quite fair (as its only target-able to heroes); and the reintroduction of the channel was needed.

He has trouble trading blows, but its easily fixed with the fact that laning mana drain does have some uses against some heroes, allowing him a good advantage over them. I feel 600 shouldn't be the norm for a hero as it seems to be right now, so I try to avoid it when possible.

To save you time though:

Intelligence
Hellbourne
Ranged 500
Movespeed 300

Armor: 2.6

Strength 15 + 1.5
Agility 13 + 2.1
Intelligence 22 + 2.8

Starting damage: 44-52

His growth is very high at 6.8 but he does have the unfortunate downside of having Old Torturer-like strength and growth. Base stats are quite poor to balance out his strong skill set. Standard BAT. Stats are always the hardest part but I feel the Agility should be there in a form or another, as he does benefit somewhat from attack speed. Overall I may tone down the growths by 0.2 ish each, maybe more. As for the starting stats its in the air.

**Hubaris** · 08-17-2012, 07:45 PM

Bump for additional feedback.

**Hubaris** · 08-28-2012, 04:35 PM

Bumpchill.

**[TECH]Gorb** · 08-28-2012, 06:40 PM

So yeah I meant to post here ages back but RL took off with a vengeance, in addition to online stuff. Apologies for the late reply!

In my opinion, whether you feel 600 should be the norm or not is relatively irrelevant, unfortunately. You have one of two options. You stick with whatever range you would like to impose, but I would seriously consider cast range buffs (perhaps based on playtesting) as required. Low range and low cast range stunts the laning phase which lead to a lacklustre mid-game (where this hero is evidently meant to shine). Your second option is to buff the range to 600 and perhaps use it as a measuring stick for balancing the hero (nerfing as applicable if it turns out too strong). This way it also fits in with current S2 design philosophy (regardless or not of agreement with that philosophy and/or agreement with where it is taking the game) in addition to helping the hero (better to release a hero too strong than too weak; the former gets more attention by players than the latter, which results in more balance feedback).

I'd lower the Agi gain moderately (and perhaps bump starting Agi and maybe Str to compensate), 2.1 is a pretty huge gain for the guy (though perhaps it's meant to help out scaling through Armour? Not sure).

~~Everything else looks coolio, except the flavour text for [b]Howling Miasma[/b]. *[i]Silent[/i], not Silen[i]ce[/i]. Presumably, at least. Grammatical mistakes turn me into a bloodhound :D~~

(hey another bump post)

EDIT: oooooooooooh I possibly got the "Keep Silence" reference. Clever.

**MaTz0r** · 08-28-2012, 06:53 PM

I don't know, but the ult feels completly OP.

**[EFL]Grangerer** · 08-29-2012, 05:29 AM

Hi,
i think you overnerfed Glooms Gate. If you catch only 1 enemy for a full 4 second duration in it, it only drains 320 mana and deals 320 magic damage.

I personally have a feeling that this ability should be more iconic.

After all its his only real offensive ability. I must admit i have not made up my mind how to make it more iconic, but it definitly should be. Perhaps add a stacking debuff on impact, which increases the power of following impacts. Like increasing damage and manaburn by 2/4/6/8 per stack. This would reward hitting less enemies for a long duration, while not really increasing the power if you hit many enemies.
Especially because you can't really keep the enemies in the radius yourself, which along with his E makes him very team dependant.

**[TECH]Gorb** · 08-29-2012, 05:51 AM

* it also ministuns, can affect more than one target and has a moderately low cooldown.

Please do not assume the worst-case scenario for an ability and say "oh this makes it weak". An AoE ability can be "weak" or wasted (see: Glacius ult, Tempest ult) if you manage to catch a single hero in it.

**[EFL]Grangerer** · 08-29-2012, 08:55 AM

I totally misread this one. I thought of it like Torturers Impalement, which would have made it incredibly weak and my scenario would have been the best case scenario.

This aoe totally changes the effect, power-level, possibilities and makes it kind of awesome.

**Hubaris** · 08-29-2012, 11:27 AM

@Gorb No problemo, I'm actually shocked to see someone come back more than once to post feedback so its always welcomed regardless of duration. So about the range. I'm going to keep it at 500 because at 600 he can trade blows far too well; as compensation though he will get a little more cast range on his Q. The reasoning behind this is after a port, it allows him to drop the Q in a better position without wasting precious seconds to move around at the early levels of his E. He was originally designed around the E steroid for the Agility, but I may just toss it out because with testing its not a huge impact anyway. Probably make his Int growth better (I'd prefer him to stay glass and positioning reliant) and maybe increase starting strength but not growth.

@MaTz0r What makes the Ultimate OP in your eyes? Its valuable against certain heroes with small pools but worthless against others. Also as his only single target spell, he will require other items or skills in order to get through Nullstones and such. Playing against him, you'd have to manage your mana and make sure you're never within the death range (or manage your health to ensure a good escape). More opinion would be nice though, because it can be OP in a few ways and I'm wondering which one made you think that.

@Grangerer The ability itself hurts a lot if you're caught alone. That much Mana lost at level 7 can completely cripple certain heroes who can't escape it or are caught alone. The low cooldown ensures that its always up (for the most part) and the AoE makes you able to deny a large area for a good duration. Walking through it (this has been playtested) takes a little bit of time (effectively acting as a move slow depending on how unlucky you are with the impacts) and makes casting certain spells inside it impossible. Its a fine line to balance skills with random impacts such as this, and although it can be weak (as you said) it can also be very strong during team fights or if placed well enough early.

Also, I feel that his E is more iconic as a skill <3

Thanks for the feedback to all of you, and I'm going to mull it over and release another version/update my DL link soon (tm).

**MaTz0r** · 08-29-2012, 01:31 PM

I don't know...the mechanic just feel wrong to me. People will always spend mana at fights, but its not really guarantee that they will lose life( see soul repears case). Your ultimate do not scale, its the same on the level 1 to the lvl 16, the only thing that scale is the cooldown and mana, something that alredy happens in most of the skills. To get things worse, your hero has 2 mechanics to burn the target mana, making it easy to achieve the ultimate. There is not even, I don't know, a channeling to the ultimate, it feels really cheap the way it work and extremely overpowered to me. Compare to Magebane too, the damage scales, depending on the mana the target has, and he has only one mechanic, that it is with his auto-attacks ( you could say blink help that too) so it is even harder. There is another problem too, it's not a damage, it is a swap. Just the use the swap at the first place on a str hero, and watch it dies for a pyromancer nuke. It is my personal opinion, but the way the ultimate works feels really wrong to me.

edit: Just a case, for exemple: Kraken at lvl 6 has 320 mana. At level 16, he has something like 550 mana. You don't even need to wait for him to use his mana, just swap at the start, then he dies to 3~4 auto-attacks.

**Hubaris** · 08-29-2012, 03:16 PM

Originally Posted by MaTz0r

I don't know...the mechanic just feel wrong to me. People will always spend mana at fights, but its not really guarantee that they will lose life( see soul repears case). Your ultimate do not scale, its the same on the level 1 to the lvl 16, the only thing that scale is the cooldown and mana, something that alredy happens in most of the skills. To get things worse, your hero has 2 mechanics to burn the target mana, making it easy to achieve the ultimate. There is not even, I don't know, a channeling to the ultimate, it feels really cheap the way it work and extremely overpowered to me. Compare to Magebane too, the damage scales, depending on the mana the target has, and he has only one mechanic, that it is with his auto-attacks ( you could say blink help that too) so it is even harder. There is another problem too, it's not a damage, it is a swap. Just the use the swap at the first place on a str hero, and watch it dies for a pyromancer nuke. It is my personal opinion, but the way the ultimate works feels really wrong to me.

edit: Just a case, for exemple: Kraken at lvl 6 has 320 mana. At level 16, he has something like 550 mana. You don't even need to wait for him to use his mana, just swap at the start, then he dies to 3~4 auto-attacks.

You aren't understanding how it works.

If Kraken at 16 (like in your example) has his 550 Mana and 1600 HP (for arguments sake), this is what will happen...

Both Stats are at 100%, you cast the spell and it checks which is lower, they are both at 100% of their maximum so nothing happens.
If Kraken is at 1200 HP out of his 1600 HP and his mana is at 100% still, he is at 75% HP, so his mana gets set to 75%. He goes down to 412 mana (75% also).

If Kraken goes down to 20% Mana (110/550) and his life is higher (we'll say 100%), his life gets set to 20% as well. So his life gets changed to 320/1600 (20%).

Think of it as a more advanced Magebane ultimate but with no stun, and no AoE. The spell itself (the way its coded currently) has about a 1 second cast point and its very noticeable. To counter it you simply increase you mana pool with items such as Ring of Sorcery, because the more Maximum mana you have the less likely you are to have your health set down.

A perfect balance between body and mind is important when facing off against the evil shadows of Bonechill.

EDIT: Also going to draft a Staff Effect. Currently going with: Reduces CD to 55/40/25 and Applies a Silence for 8/9/10 Seconds, or something along those lines.

**MaTz0r** · 08-29-2012, 04:40 PM

I guess I misread it! Sorry! But still, I think it should have a channeling time, just like Martyr.

**Hubaris** · 08-29-2012, 05:00 PM

I'm not a fan of a channel as losing this spell completely ruins the heroes presence. I may just do a cast time nerf if it feels too strong; but overall its breakable and the range isn't the greatest.

Updated to 1.3.

Stats Reworked.
Gloom cast Range up slightly.
Staff Added.

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