[CDC #8] Bwonsamdi - Loa of Death

Hero and Skin Suggestions
1

Description: As the Loa of Death, Bwonsamdi has existed for eons, acting as a shepherd for mortal souls into the afterlife. While rarely ever as revered as other Loa, he is no less powerful and infinitely patient. After Zul’s betrayal and the resulting death of the Loa Rezan, the Troll King Rastakhan made a bargain with Bwonsamdi in order to save his kingdom, binding his bloodline into service for the Dead Loa. Now bound to his daughter Princess Talanji, Bwonsamdi has entered the Nexus, seeking to add the souls of many worlds unto his collection.

Role: Bwonsamdi is an ethereal manipulating Specialist bound to Talanji and her allies. While his abilities lack the ability to deal damage directly, he more than makes up for it by gradually widdling away his enemies chances at survival.

Traits: Loa of Death/Nercrosis

Cooldown: 5 seconds

Bwonsamdi spends most to his time as a bodyless spirit, unable to attack or be attacked. You are naturally bound to your host body, Talanji, but you can activate to Loa of Death to move into the body of a nearby allied Hero. You will remain in them until re-activating Loa of Death, leaving Talanji’s sight range for 5 seconds, or until Talanji or your host dies. If a host other than Talanji dies, you will return to Talanji, becoming unable to cast abilities for 7 seconds. Your abilities are cast from your current host.

Necrosis
Enemies effected by Bwonsamdi’s abilities will have 50% of damage taken applied as Necrotic Health. Necrotic Health cannot be healed over, effectively limiting a targets total Hp. Necrotic Health decays over 5 seconds and is limited to 30% of a targets Total Hp.

[Q]: Soul Burst
Cooldown:
Mana Cost:

Fire a blast out in a target direction, dealing ? damage to enemies hit and slowing them by 30% for 3 seconds. The first enemy hero hit will be stunned for 1 second, having their soul ripped from their body and carried the remainder of the travel distance. The soul will make their way back toward their body, moving across all terrain. The soulless enemy will be Silenced and lose 15 Spell Armor until they retrieve their soul.

While the soul is Intangible to all effects, it can be rooted by Serpent Loa, applying its poison to it’s respective Hero.

[W]: Unwilling Vessel
Cooldown:
Mana Cost:

Jump into the body of an enemy Hero for 2.5 seconds. While inhabiting the enemy, the target will be slowed by 20%, Soul Burst will dislodge the Soul of the host, and the Necrotic Health limit is moved to 50% of their total Hp. Can reactivate this ability to return to you previous host.

[E]: Gift of the Grave
Cooldown:
Mana Cost:

Increase the attack damage of a chosen ally by 25% and cause their Basic Attacks to apply Necrosis for 5 seconds. If the target kills an enemy hero, the cooldown is Reset. This ability can be cast through your current host or Talanji.

If used on Talanji’s Totem of Light, the effect is spread to everyone within it’s healing radius.

[R1]: Dark Deal
Passive: Enter a Permanent Physical form, gaining ? Total Hp (+4% per level) and refilling your Mana Bar. Both you and Talanji will gain the 15% Spell Damage bonus from Loa of Death. Your Basic Attack apply Necrotic Health.

Active: Activate to prime Talanji’s Trait. If Talanji activate her trait while it is primed, she will sacrifice 50% of her current Hp to instantly heal Bwonsamdi for the health sacrificed and double her Spell Damage bonus for 10 seconds. This effect has a 90 second cooldown.

[R2]: Army of the Dead
Cooldown:
Mana Cost:

Cover a large area with a shroud of death for 8 seconds. Enemies within the area are revealed and lose 10 armor. Whenever any Non-Mercenary/Non-Boss unit dies within the area, they become Zombified. Zombies have 50% of their normal Total Hp, decaying over 5 seconds, and will chase down and attack enemies. Zombies only deal 50% of their normal Basic Attack damage, but deal 100% necrotic damage.

2

Great job :+1:
Sorry I didn’t appear before, but by the time you messenged me it was past midnight in my area. :sweat_smile:

I would suggest high mana costs (around 80 or 90 per ability) for Bwonsamdi, so that he is dependent on Talanji’s trait.

I have changed Talanji’s W so that is a bit more interesting to play and works better with rest of our concepts.

Also maybe make it so that when Bwonsamdi’s E is used on Totem of Light, it is removed or its healing is reduced. So that there is a downside to it.

3

Thanks for the feedback, but just for future reference lets keep these things on our discussion thread. I’m actually thinking about reworking it a bit, since I think it has too many targeted abilities for its intended playstyle.

4

Forums are being weird about my posting this, so this blurb is here.

Total - 15/20

Creativity - 3/5

The way the two characters interact is certainly interesting, with Bwonsamdi acting as a psuedo Abathur character and Talanji feeding her enemies to him. The idea of a debuff and disruption heavy ghost floating behind a support is an interesting combo, so for solely the character concept, I think it is solid. Talanj’s abilities are fairly simple at some points, with abilities like Serpent Loa and both of the heroics. I think there is definitely room to improve on these skills, especially in regard to the heroics being rather… plain for a heroic. Bwonsamdi has some interesting abilities, with Soul Burst easily being the key ability that draw my eye. I think Unwilling Vessel kind of defeats the character’s point a bit, but it does make a choice for the player to either give Talanji more power or debuff an enemy. His first heroic seems like a little bit of a let down. With how integral the character is with the combinations and the whole idea of haunting around with your allies, just slapping on a permanent physical form seems to defeat the point of the character. There is also the point that many things are left unexplained, such as how his W now works and what happens if he dies. Army of the Dead (name is on Arthas) is an interesting take on raising enemies, but I can’t help but think that it feels a little bit out of place on the character, and how it overlaps a bit with Xul’s trait. While there is definitely good things here, I think there is some work that could be done.

Cohesiveness - 3/5

The two characters work pretty well together, with the shared trait, the Q’s working together, and the E’s working together. One thing I find rather weird about Bwonsamdi’s E is that it empowers attack damage, but Talanji is not focused around basic attacking much at all. I would have imagined that Bwonsamdi’s boon would be able to benefit his partner character in some way. Talanji’s W and E, because of how they interact, make it feel like you will always want to wait the extra couple seconds to combo the totem and the W together; I cannot think of a single situation where this would not be the case. Because of this, the character doesn’t seem to work together seamlessly, but instead feel forces to work together in a very specific way. I think removing the interaction with the W and the E and perhaps making her abilities interact in a less arbitrary way would be for the best. I would also like to see the heroics diversified, as they step on each others toes a bit with both helping allies and hurting enemies in some way, over time. For Bwonsamdi, the W working with Necrosis is interesting, and how the Q works with the W. That being said, the W has its own issues (discussed in Interaction), so I would consider looking at this further if you do decide to make changes to the W, as it is carrying the interaction solely upon itself. As mentioned before, Dark Deal feels really weird in its current form, making many abilities and interactions unexplained. Army of the Dead feels a little out of left field, being more specialist than truly supportive, something that isn’t really seen anywhere else in the kit. Keep in mind that cohesiveness is not as important on a support, though a really good design should have some interaction between abilities either mechanically or intuitively.

Thematic - 5/5

The character choices are really interesting, and I am quite impressed by the choice. The two seem to work well together both mechanically and thematically, and the themes of the abilities fit with their respective characters. While not a complaint, I’d love to see more manipulation from Bwonsamdi if possible as opposed to simple buffs and debuffs, though I can understand if this would be hard to realize.

Interaction - 4/5

The character’s combination does not seem too oppressive, and I can see them assisting their team quite solidly with their roles. Talanji seems to have quite a lot of interactive elements to her, with her skillshots, destructible totem, the W punishing grouping up in an interesting way, the R1 healing more depending on damage done. I have no complaints with Talanji. Bwonsamdi has quite the interesting Q ability, though I think that the W defeats a lot of what little interaction the character has. It is a point and click slow that then makes your Q no longer a skillshot. The fact that his E is also noninteractive means that there is very little here the enemy can influence. While there are ways to limit this, like a small range on the W, the (already quite) low duration, and a mismatched cooldown so other abilities would want to be used alone, I think you could innovate by shaking up the ability to be more interesting, perhaps adding a skillshot element to it, or by coming up with something new. The Necrosis effect does also seem kind of negligible with its rather low duration as well.