CDC #7 Leeroy Jenkins: Raid Wiper

We have had heroes that have zero bodies. We have heroes with one body. We have heroes with half a body. We have heroes with two or even three bodies.

But what if we had a hero that was negative one bodies?

Leeroy Jenkins is a unique hero that throws the game, sabotaging his “allies” for his true team using a combination of knockbacks, walls, and “well-timed” stasis abilities.

Trait: Where am I?

Leeroy Jenkins spawns on and is treated by in-game experience and other mechanics as a member of the wrong team. Leeroy shares vision with his nominal “team” and can hear text conversations from both teams, however his opponents conversations are entirely translated into Orcish using the WoW system (ie. Lol becomes Kek, everything else is just scrambled into words of the same length)

Q: Crusader’s Charge

Leeroy’s next autoattack causes him to charge forwards, knocking the target back a fair distance and possibly through walls.

W: Holy Shield

Leeroy throws out his holy shield, blocking pathing and projectiles from both teams. Holy Shield can be destroyed by his “enemies”.

E: Hand of Protection

Leeroy places his hand of protection on an ally, safeguarding them from all damage, but disabling neutralizing their ability to attack, cast abilities, or deal damage via other means (-500% spell and attack power, enough to overkill any spell/attack power buffs)

Heroic 1: HERE WE GO

Leeroy channels in place for a few seconds, then charges forwards, bringing his “Allies” with him. The longer Leeroy charges HERE WE GO, the larger the area he can gather allies from.

Heroic 2: Divine Intervention

After a short cast time, Leeroy sacrifices his life for the greater good, placing all his allies in a medium radius around him in stasis for six seconds.

Talents
Level 1

Need Before Greed: Leeroy can now pick up regen orbs at a range of 2.
Leeroy can no longer share Regen Orbs with his “Allies”
QUEST: Pick up 20 Regen Orbs
REWARD: Leeroy’s repawn time is reduce by 20%. Further regen orbs increase this by 0.25%.

DKP Basically Bribe. Bribing mercenaries increases Leeroy’s mount speed. (A gag reference to the amount of raid rare drop mounts) It’d be a shame if you “forgot” to actually capture the camp.

Herbalism. Picking up regen globes grants stacks of Herbalism, up to twelve. Activate Herbalism to throw out a Regen Globe for three stacks.

Level 4

Grand Slam Quest: Knock enemies over a wall with Crusader’s Charge
Reward: Increases Crusader’s Charge’s range and knockback.

Wallbusters Leeroy can now use Crusader’s Charge on either Holy Shield or other generated terrain, destroying it. If used on Holy Shield, the shield detonates, blinding enemies.

Stormpike Flare Gun Leeroy’s fires off a flare, granting everyone vision in a large area and revealing everything in a smaller one.

Level 7

Blessing of Protection Hand of Protection now grants Unstoppable instead of Protected.

Master Thrower Decrease Holy Shield’s cooldown if it blocks a projectile within 0.5s of landing.

Helping Hand Activate to shove Heroes under Hand of Protection in this direction. (Ala Cho’galls pre-rework Shove)

Level 10

Guess

Level 13

Fires of Justice Leeroy’s auto-attacks reduce the Cooldown of Crusader’s Charge. Using an ability raise’s Leeroy’s attack speed.

Clemency Hand of Protection now has two charges. These charges cannot be cast sequentially on the same Hero.

Guardian’s Favor Reduces Hand of Protection’s cooldown.

Level 16

Holy Phalanx Holy Shield throws out two smaller shields with 50% hp next to the main one.

Greatsword of the Righteous causes Crusader’s charge to hit all targets around the main one and knock them back for half the distance.

Noble Sacrifice Activate to dash to an “allied” hero, knocking them back and granting them armor.

Level 20

Stick to the plan Chums!: HERE WE GO! leaves a zone behind that causes any that enter it to charge in.

Mass Resurection: When Divine Intervention is cast, allies who died nearby are resurrected at 10% Health and put into stasis with the rest of Leeroy’s allies.

True Colors: Is unlocked when either team reaches level 20. Activated to reveal your true colors, changing your alignment permanently to your real team. When doing so, Leeroy’s damage and spell power are permanently increased (the old values were actually 50%).

Flavor Notes

When other characters interact with Leeroy, they use their “Negative” response, which Leeroy responds to positively.

Leeroy starts the game already spawned inside the wrong altar of storms and does a quick “waking up” animation.

All of his nominal team’s text chat is put through WoW’s orcish gibberish generator before Leeroy can hear it. He knows they’re talking, but like a player from the wrong faction, he can’t make heads or tails of it.

Alternate Skin concepts: Twilight Infiltrator Leeroy. Changeling Leeroy. Dreadlord Leeroy. Johnny Awesome Leeroy.

Particular lines include his infamous “Alright chums, lets do this! LEEROYYYYY JENKINNNNNNS” shout before charging in for “Here we go!” and “Don’t worry guys! I’VE GOT THIS!” for Divine Intervention.

Both ultimates are charged, enabling for longer voicelines that double as extra warning that Leeroy’s about to screw you over.

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The biggest problem I can see with this is Leroy could just feed his real team XP to give them a massive level advantage.

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Seeing as they’re effectively playing 5 v 4 with Leeroy only being able to be a nuissance in fights, he should definitely give his real team a level advantage. And of course, being the feeding, incompetent idiot is his whole M.O.

Then again, it could get braindead easy wayyy too fast, so it could probably be balanced out by reducing him to 0.25, 0.5, or 0.75 of a hero death. Maybe scaling up to full value as death timers get longer.

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May I suggest also recharging basic abilities of Stasised allies (like Rewind) since putting your own team in stasis is not an advantage, but rather HUGE disadvantage lol

P.S. = you might want to put a “reserved for talents” post (heck I may need do that too), cause replies will just make it harder for the Mods to read/judge the concept overall :slight_smile:

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That’s the point, he’s technically part of the opposite team, so his “friendly” abilities are meant to hinder allies. His actual team members are entirely able to kill him.

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Exactly. Leeroy quite literally wins when the team he’s physically on loses. Unless he takes the level 20 talent “True Colors” Also I couldn’t reserve anything because apparently we’re not allowed to post two posts before someone else posts one.

To be fair, you can probably edit the original comment with the full talent tree no problem(not to mention any skins, quotes, etc.), so you shouldn’t need to reserve a post(maybe). Character limit per post is at least 10,000 now. (^_^)

A fix to this is to reverse the exp Leeroy gives when he dies, so that if the “enemy” team does kill him by mistake, his team gains exp. In the same vein, I think Leeroy probably shouldn’t be able to accidentally kill his own team mates, but maybe that’s part of the risk of the engagement. Maybe Leeroy can’t auto-attack, and “enemy” towers won’t fire on him so he can’t power-feed. He can only attack mercs, and otherwise is a pure utility support hero. Having full vision, a free low cooldown forcewall, free peels, and more should make up for it. He would soak exp for the “enemy” team", but since he has no wave clear, this would be slow going.

I’d like to see Crusader charge silence friendly team members he passes by, just like the awkward silence after he ran in the original video before “Oh my god, did he just run in???”

More like…You play LoL? It’s around the size of Trundle’s ice block in that game. Not nearly as big as Forcewall. I based it off of a boss fight from Warlords of Draenor named Vigilant Kathar who’d throw a tower shield at you and you hid behind it to avoid one of his abilities.

Total Score - 16/20

Creativity - 5/5
Leeroy being planted on the enemy team as a “double agent” kind of hero is very creative and unique. His abilities are all interesting enough, and work in interesting ways to help his real team if used properly. Full points here.

Cohesiveness - 4/5
Leeroy’s abilities all work toward the common theme of sabotaging his team, so there is plenty of cohesion there. I don’t feel that it is a full 5 points just because no abilities feel like they work together specifically, just in overall theme. (By this I mean that there are no neat combos or abilities that flow into each other nicely in his kit.)

Thematic - 5/5
Leeroy being an incompetent team member that actively sabotages his team matches what he is known for perfectly (and putting him on the other team makes this a viable playstyle). As for a game changing idea, this definitely qualifies; it’s unique at least at a level of Abathur or Cho’gall, maybe even more.

Interaction - 2/5
This is definitely the greatest problem with the concept, and an area that I see being difficult to work out. For the team Leeroy is sabotaging, I don’t see any counterplay for them. They can never escape or disable Leeroy, so they are permanently subject to his shenanigans that can end up really frustrating (preventing kills with Crusader Strike and Hand of Protection, body blocks with Holy Shield). Also, the fact that he can give his real team permanent vision of their foes at all times is a huge problem; imagine never being able to take a mercenary camp in peace because Leeroy will tell his real team that you are doing so. There’s also a fringe case of what a troll Leeroy can do; while his abilities can sabotage the team he’s stuck on to, they can also just work to sabotage his real team. The vision problem is also double sided; Leeroy can lead the team he’s supposed to be sabotaging to his real team when they’re taking camps. I’m not sure there’s anything you can/should do about that, though, because anyone who wants to troll their team can just feed anyway. (So the marked off points are for the other reason, not what a troll Leeroy can do.)

There is one combo, using Crusader Charge, then Holy Shield to maximize delays to a gank. Crusader Charge people away from your team, then place holy shield between them and their would-be killers to get in the way of any followup.

Not much of a combo mind you, but it exists.

Other than that, using his two abilities that deter escapes (Holy Shield and Hand of Protection) to make sure an ally is caught by either of his Heroics, or using Crusader’s charge to reposition for them are ways to set up combos.

On the subject of interactivity, it’s a bit of a toss really. As long as Leeroy himself sees what his nominal team sees, he can simply use text or voice chat to give his opponent’s locations away (which was the original intent). The vision-sharing was me trying to simplify it.

Even if you disable communication in-game, there are too many out-of-game options for that to really impact co-ordinated team play. And anyone who plays MOBAs knows, people selling their own team out as salt levels rise is a thing that happens “Sven at ancients” “Urgot in river brush” “Idiot Herc trying to solo fire giant”

As far as there being no real way to counterplay him, that is true, but honestly, I just don’t see a way around it other than engaging in large teamfights where his influence would be less than that of an actual 5th hero, and in early game, using a 2-1-2 composition to pressure lanes since Leeroy can’t actually depush anything and his team’s down a man for pushing out. Think of it like a hatbathur. Not much you can actually do to stop abathur from doing his thing, but his thing is more limited than an actual 5th body. Leeroy’s theme makes making his team able to actually CC him…difficult to work with.

The closest to interaction I can think of would be avoiding his charge-up ultimates before they go off, which offsets their ability to wipe his team.

It was my understanding that Leroy could see what his enemies saw, but his “real team” could not (maybe I misunderstood).

I think a good way to mitigate this would be to have Leroy lose vision while dead, that way he wants to sabotage “his team”, but also would rather avoid dying himself (though that would make him less Leroy-like :stuck_out_tongue: ). And if he just feeds without caring (like a true Leroy), he won’t give his “real team” that much of an advantage in terms of intel.

My idea was that Leeroy’s real team could see only what Leeroy himself saw on top of their normal vision, as a concession to the fact that more coordinated players would be able to get the same results via leeroy feeding them info anyway.

CHANGELOG: Removed the perma-vision. Added a talent to give both teams vision of an area.

Overall Score

Creativity - 5/5

Cohesiveness - 3/5

Thematic - 5/5

Interaction - 2/5

Total - 15/20

Creativity - 5/5

This is perhaps one of the most creative characters I’ve seen, with one of the more unique gameplay identities in the game. The abilities, while simple, are still unique in their own right. Of everything this design does, creativity is its strongest point.

Cohesiveness - 3/5

The core gameplay identity is clearly defined, and multiple talents feed into this loop quite effectively. While minor, I do find that the abilities don’t flow together naturally, even situationally, and some talents that add combos seem to actually take away from the design in some way (aka Wallbusters). I think adding more ways for Leeroy’s abilities to interact in the talents would help out in this regard. Focusing specifically on talents, there seems a distinct lack of builds within the talent trees, with most talents feeling detached from any real core identity. Along with this, several talent trees have talents that step on its neighbors toes, such as Tier 1’s globe talents and Tier 5’s Hand of Protection talents. I think you need to take a step back and truly consider build paths for players to customize their Leeroy experience.

Thematic - 5/5

The thematic of the build is spot on with the identity of Leeroy. Altogether quite good representation of him, but seems more like a joke concept (which I get is what you were going for) than an actual submission. Changing up team numerical dynamics definitely fits the contest theme as well.

Interaction - 2/5

Nortin and you both acknowledged this, and the issue still stands. While a very interesting and funny design, I can’t imagine something like this would every really fly. Your “allies” have little to no ways to counteract your shenanigans, leaving you to run around and do whatever you’d like with little repercussions. While it would definitely be a challenge, adding in some ways for your “allied” team to counteract what you are doing would bring this score up, but I just can’t bring myself to increase it to anything more than 2. The points you got so far were because of the delays on the heroics.

Wallbusters…isn’t actually meant to be used on Leeroy’s own wall. It’s meant to “accidnetally” break stuff like Tass’s force wall because DAMNIT LEEROY. I will admit that I need to work on the talents more, making talents has always been my weakest attribute in terms of hero design.

The “Benefit” for smashing Leeroy’s own wall is one more of those bits where Leeroy’s kit has a “Intended” use to help his “team” but is really going to be used the wrong way instead.

Creativity - 4/5

Creatively, this is quite a unique idea, with the double agent that sabotages idea being quite an interesting idea. The talents are also quite good. However, I don’t really see anything for Week 3, which is where the docked point lands.

Cohesiveness - 4/5

While everything contributes well to his core theme, there is still a lack of in-kit cohesion otherwise. While there may be a somewhat lacking bit of cohesiveness in his talent tree, I don’t even think he’d be the worst offender in the game, and so I’ll tentatively let it slide.

Thematic - 5/5

As has been said before, this fits Leeroy and the CDC theme quite well. Nothing of note here.

Interaction - 2/5

I really think this has been covered well already, but it’s a little lazy to just refer to the previous judges, so: Leeroy’s “False Team” really needs some way to interact with him. Whether its the ability to CC him or some effects that allow the “False Team” to otherwise interact with some of what Leeroy can do needs a good bit of work.

Overall Score

Creativity - 4/5
Cohesiveness - 4/5
Thematic - 5/5
Interaction - 2/5

Total - 15/20

Additional Notes

I’d consider adding a couple of clarifications as to which team you mean on certain abilities, just in case. As it stands, “Enemy” and Enemy(same for the Ally/“Ally” mentions) could both mean either Leeroy’s actual team or his, as I said before, “False Team”, the one he’s with for at least most of the match.

Couldn’t come up with a solution to the whole interaction problem so here’s my design notes instead.

Leeroy was based on a my experiences as a MOBA veteran. Namely that of having these damn “mid or I feed” types and the generally terminally stupid. The idea of having this be the intentional playstyle of one hero who happens to be on the wrong team. Which fits Leeroy’s identity as the crazy reckless guy who screwed up his raid (even though said raid had an utterly unusable plan to begin with).

Leeroy’s base kit, I must admit, doesn’t really come from any particular bit of his character but rather just random paladin abilities that would have the potential to be used wrong. Much like Medivh, Leeroy is good at helping his real team escape. In his case, he CCs the highest threat with Hand of Protection, knocks the vulnerable hero to safety with Crusader’s Charge, then blocks the path with Holy Shield.

On the other hand, I had much more success using Leeroy’s origins for his Heroics. His iconic charge into the Rookery is made into HERE WE GO!, where he’ll charge in with an unwilling team forced into following him. Meanwhile, Divine Intervention is a reference to the Pals for Life’s horrible plan, which consists of their paladins committing suicide to cast it on their mages so they’d be safe from aggro. Except the whole issue that said mages won’t be able to cast their aoes which doomed the plan from the beginning (amongst other issues).

Personally, I’ve always felt the interaction bit could be limited by playing a comp that doesn’t care about particular targets and just kept swinging until the other team fell over. Bruiser-heavy with a hypercarry and sustain supports. Just keep going until the weight of only having 4 heroes in a straight-up fight buries the opposition.

DarthWalrus - 77/100

Creativity: 10/10
Cohesiveness: 8/10
Thematic: 10/10
Interaction: 3/10
(+0 Thoughtfulness, +0 Game Fluidity)