Broll Bearmantle 🐻- A druid that actually shapeshifts!

Darhide-1157 · February 23, 2020, 6:52pm

Malfurion is great and all but he doesn’t do the one thing a lot of druids are known for - shapeshifting.

Broll is a Bruiser that has access to Bear Form which increasing his survivability and Cat Form which allows him to dish out more damage. Utilizing both forms allows for him to adapt to any situation.

In his true form Broll can cast Rejuvenation, healing himself a little over time.

Baseline Talent (1) - Bear Form
Shapeshift into a Bear and gain 25 Armor. 6 second cooldown.
Cooldown starts when cancelled.

Baseline Talent (2) - Cat Form
Shapeshift into a Cat and gain 40% attack speed. 6 second cooldown.
Cooldown starts when cancelled.

Trait (D) - Shapeshifter
Broll can Shapeshift into various animals to gain new abilities. Activate to cancel your current Form and Shapeshift back into Night Elf Form.

Basic Abilities for each form:

Night Elf Form

Q - Rejuvenation: Regenerate 54 health each second for 6 seconds. 12 second cooldown.

W - Ironfur: Shapeshift into Bear Form and gain a Shield that absorbs 480 damage over 4 seconds. 10 second cooldown.

E - Feral Charge: Shapeshift into Cat Form and leap to the target area, dealing damage upon impact. 12 second cooldown.

Bear Form

Q - Maul: Lunge forward, dealing damage to enemies. The end of the lunge deals additional damage and heals Broll for 75% of the damage dealt to enemy Heroes. 6 second cooldown.

W - Ironfur: Gain a Shield that absorbs 480 damage over 4 seconds. 10 second cooldown.

E - Roar: Lets out a ferocious roar, dealing 30 damage to nearby enemies and Slowing them by 20% for 3 seconds. 8 second cooldown.

Cat Form

Q - Claw: Swipes forward in the target direction, dealing damage. 4 second cooldown.

W - Rake: Deal damage to the target enemy and cause them to Bleed for additional damage over 2.5 seconds. Damaging the target with Basic Attacks and abilities while in Cat Form refresh this duration. 8 second cooldown.

E - Feral Charge: Leap to the target area, dealing damage upon impact. 12 second cooldown.

Ultimate (R1) - Berserk: Maul and Claw have no cooldown and cost no mana. You cannot Shapeshift out of Cat or Bear Form while active. Lasts 6 seconds. 70 second cooldown.

Ultimate (R2) - Nature’s Grasp: After 1 second, Root nearby enemy Heroes for 2 seconds and deal damage over the duration. 50 second cooldown.

Mount (Z) - Travel Form
Instantly Shapeshift into a Stag, gaining 20% movement speed.
Broll’s abilities in this Form are the same as in his Night Elf Form. Attacking or using an ability will automatically Shapeshift him out of Travel Form.

Talent Ideas

Level 1:
Savage Defense - Every 12 seconds, gain 60 Physical Armor against the next enemy Hero Basic Attack. Stores up to 3 charges. Hitting enemy Heroes with Roar or the end of Maul’s lunge reduces this cooldown by 4 seconds.

Frenzied Regeneration: Rejuvenation heals for 50% more while under 60% health.

Glyph of Travel Form - Increase Travel Form’s movement speed bonus from 20% to 30%.
I thought about also making it so ally Heroes can mount you if they can use mounts. Still not sure.

Level 4:
Pulverize - The end of Maul’s lunge reduces enemy Armor by 15 for 4 seconds.

Demoralizing Roar - Enemy Heroes hit by Roar deal 60% less damage for 3 seconds.

Prowl - Shapeshifting into Cat Form grants Stealth for 30 seconds and Unrevealable for the first 0.5 seconds. Remaining stationary for at least 1.5 seconds while Stealthed grants Invisible.

Level 7:
Skull Bash - The end of Maul’s lunge Silences enemy Heroes for 1.25 seconds.

Pounce - Feral Charge also Slows enemies hit by 60% for 1.5 seconds.

Disentanglement - Shapeshifting removes all Roots and Slows from Broll.

Level 13:
Stampeding Roar - Roar increases the movement speed of nearby allied Heroes by 30% for 3 seconds.

Master Shapeshifter - Reduce the cooldown of Bear Form and Cat Form to 3 seconds.

Level 16:
Survival Instincts - Shapeshifting into Cat or Bear Form grants Protected for 1 second.

Level 20
Taste of Blood: Increase the duration of Berserk by 2 seconds. Takedowns refresh the duration of Berserk.

Flight Form - After 1 second, Shapeshift into a bird and fly to the target location. 60 second cooldown.

If you have any other ideas feel free to share!

Epicus-11689 · February 24, 2020, 7:31am

Nice - I really like this concept. Really does the whole concept of “Druid” in the Warcraft universe justice with the kit. It would also be another Bruiser multiclass so Varian isn’t alone - and it makes sense. What better multiclass than a shapeshifter? I also want to play as a bear…

Android-21323 · February 24, 2020, 12:18pm

I really like the idea, but a bruiser who’s only self sustain is 304 health every 14 seconds and only a 15% damage reduction, wont be able to stay in a lane for long. I’d say that you should up the Armor in bear form a bit, and give Rejuvenation some condition under which it is increased by a decent amount. It would also be nice to see a few talents that really allows for him to specialize in one of the forms.

Darhide-1157 · February 25, 2020, 12:18am

Originally I had his kit worked around the idea of him being a Multiclass back on the old forums. But they have since done away with Multiclass so I figured I should make a new concept but this time based on a Bruiser.

I’ll try to think of something, but I’m trying not to give him too much tankiness / sustainability as a trade-off. Because in theory if you use his forms together in unison as I have them designed then you have access to a fair bit of mobility.

waterlong-1416 · February 25, 2020, 7:37am

I actually quite like this one. Im a fan of his night elf form just providing some healing instead of trying to mix in balance druid like some other people try to do.

I agree that the heal and armor isnt quite enough. Done be to afraid with sustain on a briusers. Most briusers have a huge amount of sustain with some even being able to keep up with the actual healers (in single target healing anyway).
Maybe a heal every time younswap forms and/or am entire talent tier deticated to sustain.

Another random idea. What if bear form got leap and cat form got feral charge.

Android-21323 · February 25, 2020, 12:10pm

Feral animals are cats n’ stuff, so that would actually make more sense. I’d probably name it Feral Leap (cat) and charge (bear), since leap sounds a bit more… acrobatic. It also just works great that the bear form has more CC and the cat form has more mobility. I’d also say that you easily could have the bear form lower attack speed, but increase attack damage.

banelingline-1886 · February 26, 2020, 1:26am

The general issue I have is how heavily this “splits” the Hero, as you have to basically constantly swap forms very manually to access your basic needs. It’s a clunky “piano” Hero as the baseline, which is a very nasty experience, and the Talents reinforce this by offering far too little that’s multi-form.

Greymane gets away with it because all of Greymane builds are supposed to deal some damage from a safe distance in Human form, then dive in to finish with Worgen form. This doesn’t have that consistency, and has more abilities to manage.

The main ability I’d use for this would be Thrash, replacing Maul and Claw, which is an AoE Bleed that’s present in both Cat and Bear form, doing more up-front as Cat but stacking to a higher total (on its own) as Bear. Using it as the Bear form entry does reduce kill-confirming power, but makes it so there’s just one engage in Night Elf form and only one more ability than Greymane.

From there, I’d give Cat form Prowl as a basic ability instead of Claw and Bear form Barkskin as activatable armor (or a shield) instead of Maul, giving both a button to push for avoiding damage, but in very different fashions. Meanwhile, Rejeneration would be more like 500 over 15 seconds on a 7 second cooldown and able to target allies, giving nearly exactly Yrel’s Gift of the Naaru healing as a baseline HoT.

It’s less ability for up-front damage, but more coherent in playstyle as it’d have Bleed, engage and damage handling either way, but the difference in kind (building up vs. burst, Charge-at-enemy vs. Leap-to-point, damage reduction vs. untargetable). The full-fledged “Piano Druid” dancing between three sets of cooldowns should be on the table, but not be how the baseline functions.

Darhide-1157 · February 26, 2020, 2:22am

Alright so currently I’ve upgraded the Armor in Bear Form to 25, increased the healing of Rejuvenation a bit, and made it so that the end of Maul’s lunge heals Broll for a percentage of the damage dealt when used against Heroes.

Btw sorry if I appear slow on changes to things I say I’m gonna make, I got too much stuff to do.

Whether or not I’d like to put this in aside, this part confuses me because the same ability (Maul) is being replaced by two different abilities? How do I fit that on Bear Form’s kit? Did you mean to replace 2 of them?

I do kind of like the idea of Barkskin though. Just figuring where/if I should put it in. I’d definitely prefer to leave Roar as it’s used both in WoW a lot and it’s very iconic to druids in Warcraft 3. Maybe I’ll take out Feral Charge and only leave Cat Form with mobility.

Target allies baseline? Even Yrel can’t do that baseline, she has to give up a talent for that. I don’t think he absolutely needs to be able to heal allies either for 100% lore-accuracy, so I’d rather use the talent slot for something that supports his own sustainability.

I also have similar issues to making Prowl baseline instead of a talent. I don’t think players that talent into Bear Form only should have access to stealth for free imo.

banelingline-1886 · February 27, 2020, 2:14am

…I somehow lost track of it, I’ll be honest. Feral Charge, or some other manner of mobility, is important to the Bear being able to perform Bruiser duties, and helps out with designing Talents to apply to both, but this can be handled by the short dash of Maul, which can be a property given to Thrash as a merged ability.

I’m using Yrel’s talent in question as an example, as it’s a clear indication that this quantity of healing on a Bruiser is not unacceptable, and it’s also the self-sustain “slot”. Another comparison point is in Tyrael’s W, which has a similar potential “tear” between self-sustain and team shielding, and Talents biasing it in one direction or the other.

Maybe have the baseline cooldown be more like 12 seconds, enough of a buffer to deal with most Silences and Stuns for personal uptime, then Talents getting it to something like 80% uptime on two targets. That way, it’s a usage choice between self-sustain and healing allies by baseline, with some Talents present that reduce this choice.

And I think that the Talents shouldn’t be about pinning down basic functions in one Form, instead having the builds mostly focus on functions present in both Cat and Bear form, being biased to one or the other based on the particular abilities instead of on the basis of most of the Talents you picked only working in that form.

Again, Greymane gets away with it because his builds don’t change the gameplan of Human poke → Worgen dive - > Human escape, which this doesn’t have a counterpart to. Having a third of your kit be functionally worthless like the way you’re doing it results in isn’t good Hero design.

Granted, in the specific case of Prowl, having a Bleed-unified kit would justify it being a Talent, and more firmly define the character as being a Bruiser in general structure by the supposed “assassin” form still preferring drawn out fights. Having it as a base ability is because of thinking of it as a “full” multiclass by baseline, initially.

A far lighter adjustment would be having Cat and Bear form have Rejuvination on 1, then an ability from the other on 2, thus offering immediate access to the most-relevant ability (Leap to escape, Barkskin/Ironfur/whatever it ends up being for survivability) in one push, rather than needing to separately activate the form-switch.

Just merging the Qs, whether that be by making them both Thrash for general bleed-talent transparency, both Claw to be “no-frills”, or something else if you can think of it, makes for a significant potential aid to having some degree of reason for using both, even with the existing Talent tree.

As for thoughts on mechanics to focus Talents on and pull the Hero’s playstyle together:

Bleed synergies aping combo point scaling, such as Roar boosting damage dealt based on nearby Bleed stacks (Savage Roar, which is Cat-form in WoW, and the WC3 Roar), and having Rip instead of Rake, boosting the Bleed stacks and setting their duration to something helpful.
Taking more of Restoration’s burst management, such as using Cultivation to make healing amplified on low-health Rejuvination targets (this is externalizing your Frenzied Regeneration talent), or having an Ironbark talent for cooldown reduction or charges and ally-targeting on Barkskin. There’s also Cenarion Ward, which is a larger heal over time that only goes off once damage is taken.
Affinities. For HotS, it’d be a form-specific previous Talent and allowing use of an additional ability of that form that doesn’t cause a shapeshift. Roar for Guardian, Leap for Feral (using Travel Form for the animation on Night Elf), probably a Talent ability for Restoration.

So, to kinda lay out the abilities, with presumptive stats (not calculated in any capacity, no mana values, etc, basically the ratios by feel. Also, screw formatting) to the setup as I have it with less alterations than my initial suggestions:

Night Elf:
qRejuvination: 12 second cooldown, heal 500 over 15 seconds.

wBarkskin: 10 second cooldown, transform into Bear form, gain 30 armor for 4 seconds.

eLeap: 12 second cooldown, transform into Cat form, leap to target area and deal ~100 damage to nearby enemies.

Bear:
qBarkskin: 10 second cooldown, gain 30 armor for 4 seconds.

wThrash: 3 second cooldown, move forward and deal ~50 damage. Enemies hit take ~25 damage per second for 8 seconds, additional hits apply separate instance, up to 3.

eRoar: 8 second cooldown, slow nearby enemies 20% for 3 seconds, gain 5% damage for 6 seconds for each of your damage over time effects on nearby enemy Heroes.

1Rejuvination: 12 second cooldown, transform into Night Elf form, heal 500 over 15 seconds.

2Leap: 12 second cooldown, transform into Cat form, leap to target area and deal ~100 damage to nearby enemies.

Cat:
qRip: 8 second cooldown, deal ~40 damage to target enemy and ~65 per second for 4 seconds, replacing your other damage over time effects with this.

wThrash: 3 second cooldown, move forward and deal ~50 damage. Enemies hit take ~50 damage per second for 8 seconds, additional hits refresh.

eLeap: 12 second cooldown, transform into Cat form, leap to target area and deal ~100 damage to nearby enemies.

1Rejuvination: 12 second cooldown, transform into Night Elf form, heal 500 over 15 seconds.

wBarkskin: 10 second cooldown, transform into Bear form, gain 30 armor for 4 seconds.

This version still has some transformation clunk, as you have to burn your defensive cooldown to enter Bear form, but it’s accessing what you’d be most likely to very suddenly need as the transformation itself.

Off the baseline in isolation, the most straightforward tendency is to enter with Cat form to deal immediate damage, move to Bear form to stack up to a higher DPS overall and Roar, return to Cat to amplify damage further with a boosted Rip, then back to Bear to re-stack.

Dfive-1429 · March 22, 2020, 6:30am

Hots team please read this one ^
Broll Bearmantle <3

CoolDoggo-1358 · March 25, 2020, 2:20am

Would love to see a druid shapeshifter in the game even the diablo 2 druid could work as well.