CDC #7 Deathwing, The Destroyer

Hero and Skin Suggestions
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Deathwing

The Destroyer
Role: Ranged Tank

Overview: A ranged tank that overpowers his enemies and sustains in combat.

Strengths

  • Sustained Combat
  • Control
  • Very high health pool

Weaknesses

  • Healing reduction
  • Poke
  • %-based damage

Quick words regarding the contest theme:
I personally think Deathwing like Alexstrasza is an awesome hero that would totally rock Blizzcon if he got unveiled during it. This is why I chose to work with him. (also he a big boi)

Stats

Health: 3200 (5%)
Health Regen: (5%)
Resource: 500 Mana
Attack Damage: 143 (4%) (Hits enemies in a cone like Alex’s.)
Attack Speed: 0.5
Attack Range: 5.5
Movement Speed: 85%
Hitbox Size: 1.5 (Alexstrasza: Dragonform is 1.0)

Z
Mount
4 Second cooldown

Passive: Deathwing’s base movement speed is reduced by 15%. Activate to channel for 1.5 seconds and gain 45% (130% total) movement speed.

Basic Abilities

Q
Crush
45 Mana | 8 Second cooldown

Deathwing leaps forward a short distance, dealing 110 (4%) damage and slowing enemies hit by 25% for 2 seconds.

Note: The range is around 6 ingame units.

W
Eruption
60 Mana | 12 Second cooldown

After a 0.5 second delay, call forth a geyser of lava from the ground, dealing 88 (4%) and stunning enemies hit for 0.75 seconds in an area and after 0.75 seconds around Deathwing.

Empowered by Perch: 20 Mana | 4 Second cooldown. Gains 50% more range and the radius is increased by 25%.

Notes: This ability is comprised of two 0.75 second stuns in succession (The 0.75 second delay of the second eruption starts after the 0.5 second delay) so Deathwing can effectively lock down one or multiple enemies for 1.5 seconds if he is allowed to get in close.

E
Dragon’s Breath
70 Mana | 15 Second cooldown

Depending on Deathwing’s current stacks of Iron Core, this ability varies.

Under 25 stacks: Deathwing breathes searing smoke at a target location. Enemy heroes inside the smoke take 32 (4%) damage per second and lose allied vision. Smoke lasts 2 seconds.

Over 25 stacks: Deathwing unleashes a blazing inferno from his maw, dealing 196 (4%) damage to enemies hit and lighting the ground on fire for 2 seconds, dealing 66 (4%) damage per second. Heroes inside the area lose 15 armor.

Empowered by Perch: 25 Mana | 6 Second cooldown. Range increased by 50%.

Notes: To unleash some fiery mayhem, Deathwing first needs to get the furnace fires burning. That is if you don’t need the utility of a smokescreen.

Trait(s)

Iron Core
Whenever Deathwing deals damage to heroes, he gains a stack of Iron Core. Iron Core last 5 seconds and stack indefinitely. For each stack of Iron Core, Deathwing gains an additional 4 (5%) health regeneration.

Colossus
Damage that would deal 5% or less of Deathwing’s maximum health is reduced by 20%. (%-based damage overrides this)

Heroics

R
Perch
80 Mana | 120 Second cooldown

After a 2 second delay, Deathwing takes flight towards a destroyed or intact fort or keep, perching himself on top of it, increasing his health to 9000 (5%). The fort or keep is disabled and becomes immune for the duration.

Eruption and Dragon’s Breath are also empowered and can be cast while Deathwing is perched.

If Deathwing loses all of his health or he cancels it, the effect ends early. After the effect ends, Deathwing lands back at the location he flew from. Lasts 20 seconds.

This is more than anything a thematic heroic, and I feel like it fits very well.

R
Ring of Fire
100 Mana 100 Second cooldown

Deathwing stomps the ground, flaring up a ring of fire around him. Enemies on the ring perimeter take 24 (4%) damage every 0.25 seconds. While Deathwing is inside the ring, the duration of disabling effects is reduced by 50%. Lasts 4 seconds.

Ring radius is about twice as big as Ring of Frost, and its width is 50% wider than Ring of Frost.

2 Likes
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Thank you for the post OP, very cool.

1 Like
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Talents

Tier 1 (LVL 1)

Fuel For The Fire
Regeneration Globes grant 4 stacks of Iron Core.

Taking Flight
Crush gains 40% more range when cast while mounted.

Assert Dominance
Dealing damage to heroes with Crush also reduces their damage dealt by 30% for 3 seconds.

Tier 2 (LVL 4)

Volcanic Might
Hitting an enemy hero with the first explosion of Eruption increases the damage of the second explosion by 50% and it grants twice as many stacks of Iron Core.

Tempered Scales
While Deathwing is above 25 stacks of Iron Core, the threshold for Colossus is increased to 6.5%.

Conflagrate
Hitting an enemy hero with Crush catches the ground a-flame, dealing 66 (4%) damage per second. Lasts 2 seconds.

Tier 3 (LVL 7)

Furnace Fire
For each stack of Iron Core, Deathwing deals 2 (4%) damage to nearby enemies.
Hitting multiple heroes counts as only 1 for generating stacks of Iron Core.

Fiery Momentum
Basic-attacks lower the cooldown of Deathwing’s basic abilities by 1 second.

All Consuming Flame
While over 25 stacks of Iron Core, each additional stack increases the damage of Dragon’s Breath by 2%, up to 50%.

Heroics (LVL 10)

Tier 5 (LVL 13)

Scorched Earth
Each stack of Iron Core increases Deathwing’s attack speed by 2%, up to 50%.

Devouring Inferno
Dragon’s Breath also affects the area between Deathwing and his target in a cone.

Smokescreen
While below 25 stacks of Iron Core, the area and duration of Dragon’s Breath is increased by 50%,

Tier 6 (LVL 16)

Subjugation
Crush stuns enemies for 0.75 seconds in the center.

Heat Crash
Stunning an enemy hero with Eruption resets the cooldown of Crush.

Scorched Earth
Eruption explodes a third time if the second explosion hits an enemy hero.

Tier 7 (LVL 20)

Cataclysm
Active Talent
100 Mana | 100 Second cooldown

After 2 seconds, fly to a location, leaving a trail of fire in your wake that deals 24 (4%) damage every 0.25 seconds and lasts 4 seconds. A Ring of Fire is created in the landing position. Cooldown is shared with Ring of Fire.

Dragon’s Keep
Increases the duration of Perch by 100%.

Desolate Wastes
The first explosion of Eruption leaves a crater in its location. Future casts of Eruption are mimicked in the location of the crater. Up to 2 craters may be active at a time.

Wings of Destruction
Deathwing can no longer be dismounted from damage or crowd-control. While mounted, gain the ability to cross unpathable terrain.

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Total Score - 16/20

Creativity - 4/5
Deathwing’s kit is mostly creative and looks like it’d be interesting to play. I especially like how Dragon’s Breath varies based on trait stacks; it’s pretty unique and interesting.

Cohesiveness - 5/5
All of the abilities in the concept work together in meaningful ways; Crush puts Deathwing in range for Eruption value, and Eruption keeps enemies in Dragon’s Breath. I don’t have any complaints here.

Thematic - 3/5
Deathwing’s kit does feel like it fits him thematically, with him being a large dragon and stomping around, causing havoc for his enemies and being hard to remove. I do think that the concept misses the contest theme somewhat; even though Deathwing is abnormally large, and that is game changing in a way, I feel like there’s more you can do with the idea of a giant hero to make it feel truly brand new.

Interaction - 4/5
Deathwing’s kit itself looks interactive enough; nothing to inconvenience allies, plenty of counterplay for his enemies (don’t stand in the fire!). Iron Core might be a little bit overtuned in it’s current form, but I’m not sure. I’d advise careful and take another look at it, in case another judge is more sure of themself than I am :p. The real problem I see with interactivity is that Deathwing’s large size and slowness could be frustrating for his team; I could see him getting in the way of them a lot.

1 Like
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Thank you for the feedback!

Interaction - 4/5
Deathwing’s kit itself looks interactive enough; nothing to inconvenience allies, plenty of counterplay for his enemies (don’t stand in the fire!). Iron Core might be a little bit overtuned in it’s current form, but I’m not sure. I’d advise careful and take another look at it, in case another judge is more sure of themself than I am :p. The real problem I see with interactivity is that Deathwing’s large size and slowness could be frustrating for his team; I could see him getting in the way of them a lot.

I will definitely look into tweaking Iron Core and his Thematic feel. Iron Core is definitely broken if you do stuff like stand in a Li-Ming beam.

As for being frustratingly slow, I hoped that I could make him 15% slower as a downside to his sheer tankiness, but not make him frustrating like D.Va. I made his mount a longer channel, but nonetheless 130% movement speed while mounted so he doesn’t lose on rotations.

Thematic - 3/5
Deathwing’s kit does feel like it fits him thematically, with him being a large dragon and stomping around, causing havoc for his enemies and being hard to remove. I do think that the concept misses the contest theme somewhat; even though Deathwing is abnormally large, and that is game changing in a way, I feel like there’s more you can do with the idea of a giant hero to make it feel truly brand new.

EDIT: Also implemented a 2nd trait to play on his ‘gargantuan-ness’, hopefully making him feel more like a big bad raid boss out to cause chaos.

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Overall Score

Creativity - 5/5

Cohesiveness - 4/5

Thematic - 4/5

Interaction - 3/5

Total - 16/20

Creativity - 5/5

The character is baseline pretty creative, and so I won’t count any points off here. The only thing that could use something more is the Q ability, which is pretty simplistic when all’s said and done. I think just giving it something more baseline would be really interesting, as there are already abilities in the game that are movements with damage and slows. Perhaps baking the Taking Flight talent baseline?

Cohesiveness - 4/5

The kit baseline works together actually very well, with the W and Q comboing together, the trait rewarding engages and hitting grouped enemies, as well as bolstering his E, and all of his abilities work well towards generating Iron Core stacks. My big issues come from the talent tree, which seems thrown together with little rhyme or reason. The Iron Core builders are scattered about when they should be localized to a single talent tree, and the abilities seems slotted in irregularly across the tree. I think you should define some core playstyle possibilities your character can offer, and try and build off of that, because while there are plenty of combo abilities in the talent tree, giving as high of a score as this, there could definitely be some work.

Thematic - 4/5

The character feels very much like Deathwing, though the low damages feels odd for such a destructive character. While it is a result of the needed scaling, I am left wondering if there is a better way to tackle the issue. The contest theme is tangentially addressed, but I think without any proper size effects on the game besides model size, it is more of a mechanical hindrance than it is a game changer.

Interaction - 3/5

The endeavour of trying to bring such a powerful and large character to the game as Deathwing definitely takes some courage and pride in your work, and the execute it it takes some serious finesse. My problem is that it seems that the realization you made serves to disrupt the gameplay rather than enhance it. The giant size means going through small areas on maps would be wonky or impossible, depending on coding, and the large unit collision would be a pain for enemy and ally alike. Furthermore, I seriously question the strength of the character. He has so much health and meh damage with some decent disruption, and I doubt that the movement speed slow is enough to justify balance of this character. It is extremely hard to make such a character actually work, and right now, I think he’s just falling under that mark. The abilities seem decently interactive, but several elements are just barely making it, like the stun on his W, both of his heroics, and his trait.

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Creativity - 4/5

I think this is a fairly creative take on a permanently Dragon Form Deathwing, and Iron Core is a very interesting core to the kit. While I feel like his Q and maybe a few talents earlier on, it’s only enough for me to recommend considering adding something to his Q. Unfortunately, however, there isn’t any Week 3 flavor, so I’m still docking a point.

Cohesiveness - 5/5

The kit overall contributes to the same kind of disruptive Bruiser/Tank feel and works well together. While Perch feels isolated from the rest of Deathwing’s kit identity, I feel as though its not a major concern.

Thematic - 3/5

While this kit is absolutely thematic to Deathwing, I feel like it falls quite flat for the theme of the contest. Not much has been done to really differentiate how a hero with a much larger size would work, and doesn’t really contribute much for later heroes to build on.

Interaction - 4/5

Deathwing’s kit seems interactive enough, with all of his abilities having clear way to play against them. However, a side effect of not getting much into ideas around how his larger size would work within the game, it could be frustrating for both enemies and allies to work with it.

Overall Score

Creativity - 4/5
Cohesiveness - 5/5
Thematic - 3/5
Interaction - 4/5

Total - 16/20

8

Lol, Im just imagining him being like a bus in traffic, especially if he has slower movement speed.

9

I think an easy enough fix would just be to make him the same size as Alex. She can fit anywhere on the map no problem, and that’s still absolutely huge compared to every other hero.

10

It should be a blue dragon that can be a ranged tank, not a black one.

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A black can be Ranged, but to be fair, Deathwing is weird as whether to be ranged or not( technically a summoner in DS).

12

First off, a ranged tank Blue dragon would be very different from this and thus both concepts could exist at the same time, with Deathwing’s vastly larger prominence in the public image of WoW making it nearly guaranteed he’ll come before any Blue Dragon.

Secondly, the thematic constraints of a Blue Dragon make it difficult to justify tank status, as they’re quite explicitly paranoid about threats to their immensely depleted population and their focus on spellcasting means their endurance would be quite limited.

Again, the role isn’t about the amount of power, it’s about the kind of power. Sonya is a Bruiser because Barbarians are more about dealing damage than taking it, while Stitches is a tank because the point of Abominations is to be a hardened front line.

2 Likes
13

frustrated grunt Why?

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Simply put: Blue Dragons are not tank material. They can be like Azmodan or the usually-built Kael’thas, a hard to burst down ability-based Ranged Assassin. They could have heavy defensive properties in their abilities, possibly healing from ability use or mana recovery, letting them be a Bruiser.

But because their theme is “Magic use focused Dragon”, they’re unable to actually tank within that theme because reliance on heavy ability usage doesn’t translate to the needed endurance of a Tank. The role of tank isn’t applicable to what they do. And that’s what it is, a role. A kind of power, not a scale of it.

Thematically, Tanks tend to be characters that are unassailable or inescapable, or those who’s purpose, whether in story or in game, is to be a protector.

15

A Blue Drake can be a tank, but only as a unique once, such as Malygos or Kalecgos.

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BAH! We are not going to have a blue dragon be an assassin hero any time soon! Blue Dragons use ice!

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Labreris - 79/100

Creativity: 9/10
Cohesiveness: 8/10
Thematic: 7/10
Interaction: 6/10
(+1 Thoughtfulness, +0 Game Fluidity)