CDC #13 N'Zoth: The Corruptor

Edit: I’m just gonna quit the contest. I can not for the life of me think of more than a couple talents.

The weakest and wisest of the Old Gods, N’Zoth outlived his brethren through patience and deception.

N’Zoth is a support hero who uses his immeasurable power to turn the tides of wars in his favor without having to lift a finger (tentacle?) himself.

Z: Disabled.

N’zoth is a planetary scale parasite. Not only is it rooted in place, it’s far too large to even fit on a battlefield.

Because of this, N’Zoth does not use a mount.

D: Gift of N’zoth.
N’Zoth can grant an allied hero his gift, granting them more health, and granting N’Zoth direct control of any minions and mercenaries nearby.

N’Zoth can move it’s blessing to any living allied hero with D. If a hero with N’Zoth’s blessing is killed, it counts at two hero kills and N’Zoth’s death timer is started.

N’Zoth controls the weak minded with ease, allied minions and mercenaries near the bearer of its gift are helpless against its control. With N’zoth in command, minions and mercenaries can utilize tactics and strategy, rather than mindlessly throwing themselves into the meat grinder.

In addition to more organized minions, the hero N’Zoth’s piggybacking on gets additional health to make killing them that much harder.

Q: Tentacle Rope
N’Zoth lashes out with a tentacle from the hero bearing it’s gift, dealing moderate damage. Enemy heroes hit by the end of the tentacle are grabbed, rendering them unable to move relative to N’Zoth’s gifted hero for a short time.

Basic skillshot giving N’Zoth some damage dealing ability. Clever use of the grab allows N’Zoth to prevent enemies from fleeing or prevent powerful melee enemies from closing the distance as needed.

W: Will of the Black Empire.
Minions under N’Zoth’s control take half damage and attack at double speed for a short time.

When the effect ends, they will take the mitigated damage all at once.

Will of the Black Empire allows N’Zoth to get more out of his minions. While he can’t (or maybe won’t) protect them from damage, he can make them ignore pain, allowing them to fight on after they should have died.

This effect doesn’t last forever though. If you’re not careful you may end up with your minion wave dying all at once right when you needed them most.

E: Corruption
N’Zoth takes control of an enemy minion or mercenary (excluding bosses).

Stores three charges. Mercenaries and Catapults consume three charges.

literally just Sylvanas’s Possession talent as its own ability, with the functionality extended to mercenaries. Purely because I think it’s too cool of an ability to not have talents affecting it.

R1: Malicious Gift
Fires a missile that grant’s N’Zoth control of the first enemy hero it hits for a short time. While under N’Zoth’s control, the hero does not benefit from tallents, including additional abilities or heroic abilities.

During this time, previously controlled minions and mercenaries control themselves, and N’Zoth is unable to use any of its own abilities

Dying while controlling an enemy hero is counted as a death for both the controlled hero and N’Zoth, and will begin the respawn timer for both of them.

N’Zoth doesn’t just kill it’s enemies. It corrupts and controls them, turning them into weapons of the very being they sought to destroy.

For the record, this is a CC so Deathwing and Gall are immune.

R2: Summon Faceless Servant
N’Zoth summons a faceless servant under its control. The faceless servant benefits from Will of the Black Empire and will mirror N’Zoth’s Tentacle Rope casts.

Sometimes you want to add another heavy hitter into a fight and there isn’t a convenient enemy hero to possess. Or maybe you just don’t want to have to learn how to play every single hero you might be asked to control.

Either way, Faceless Servant allows N’Zoth to bring in similar pushing power into the equation without disrupting it’s normal minion control gameplay.

Author’s note: I am aware of similarities to Sylvanas and Abathur. I’m hoping the blend of the two is unique enough to stand on its own, and when it’s time to make tallents I’ll take extra care that they bring N’Zoth even further away from those two’s niches instead of stepping on their toes even more.

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What’s the cooldown on this? If it’s too low, the negative ramifications won’t matter cause N’Zoth can move it off of a dying hero.

Very cool design on the mind control ult.

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Can he be hurt/die? If he can, how so?

Nzoth dies if his marked target dies.

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Most heroes have a was to escape incoming death. N’Zoth’s is the ability to jump ship when their host is dying.

The process of changing hosts is the same as Abathur choosing someone to hat. Move Camera > Activate D > Pick target. If you can change hosts before your current host is killed, you earned that escape.

N’Zoth has no health bar themselves, they die if the hero with their gift dies.

Like Gall, except they can apply it to any hero.

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Do you have an idea for what the cd should be, so whether it can be hard or easy to abandon ship?

If you’re using it in a clutch then it would be an escape, so I’d say in the range of Valla’s Vault or Magni’s Dwarf-toss.

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14/20

Creativity: 3/5
Im all for another abathur type hero and I like that he can be “killed”. The idea of lureing minions around has alot of strategic potential whick i like. However, W and E arent terribly interesting. Summon Faceless Servant also feels a bit to simmilar to abathurs monstrosity.

Cohesiveness: 4/5
Most everything leans twards achieving the same goal but theres not a whole lot but none of the abilites really play off of eachother an any particularly interesting ways. Maybe talents would be enough to fix this.

Thematic: 5/5
mind control and choseing champions. very old gody stuff.

Interaction: 2/5
N’Zoth has a few terrifying ways to complatly break the game. First, theres gotta be a limmit to how many minions N’Zoth command. With out one, a willing ally could just run around collecting every minion and deny the enemy team a colossal ammount of exp by never letting them fight any of them.
Second, Malicious Gift sounds to easy to get to get kills with. If you hit anyone with mobility you could just move them in to your team or towers while also blowing all of thwir escapes. Hitting a mage could potentialy get you 2 or 3 kills. I do think something akin to salvanas’s old mind control could work but I dont think giveing N’Zoth almost full access to an enemies options is the way to do it. I also think that there should be a delay for fireing the mind control projectile.
Gift of N’zoth giving any hero in the game acess to instant crowd control via Tentacle Rope sounds really dangerous. Additionaly if Tentacle Rope can be used to drag enemies then lucio op. I think a teather that slows only after it lasts a certin ammount of time would be ok tho.

some other things I diddnt doc points for. Im assumeing D has a decently long cooldown. I understand not wanting to deal with cooldown numbers but i feel like its important for this particular one to toleast say its got a long cooldown.