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.