[CDC #9 - Hero Concept] Vorazun, Nerazim Matriarch

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Vorazun

Nerazim Matriarch

Universe: Starcraft
Role: Melee Support

Short description: Vorazun is an aggressive melee support that protects her allies and hinders her enemies whilst diving with her team.

Strengths:

  • Slippery
  • High Damage
  • Allied stealth

Weaknesses:

  • Low health
  • Reliant on follow-up from allies
  • Revealing effects

Stats

Rough level 0 stats
Health 1600 (4%)
Mana 490 (10)
Attack damage 83 (4%)
Attack speed 1.67
Attack range 2.0

Note: All ability numbers are also based on level 0 stats. Numbers in parentheses show scaling per level.

Basic Abilities

Q
Crescent Strike
15 Mana | 2.5 Second cooldown
Vorazun swings her scythe around her, dealing 115 (4%) damage in an area in front of her and behind her simultaneously. If both strikes hits an enemy Hero, they are marked.

Note: Casting Crescent Strike works similarly to Maiev’s Fan of Knives, except it creates 2 damage zones, one in front of Vorazun and one 180 degrees around Vorazun. (Directly behind her). If both of these areas hit an enemy Hero, all enemy Heroes hit are marked.

W
Veil of Shadows
50 Mana | 10 Second cooldown
Vorazun shrouds herself and allied Heroes in a wide cone in front of her in a veil of energy, granting a shield with 288 (4%) health and stealth for 5 seconds. Standing still for 1.5 seconds grants invisible.

E
Shadow Dash
50 Mana | 12 Second cooldown
Vorazun dashes in a line, marking enemy Heroes she passes over and ahead of her destination.

Note: This ability is very simple, but its applications will prove its flexibility and usefulness. Furthermore, it gets expanded upon in talents.

Trait(s)

D
Void Walker
50 Second cooldown
Vorazun gains invisibility and the ability to move through other units for 2 seconds. During this, attacking or casting abilities breaks Void Walker.
Whenever a Mark of the Void is consumed, the cooldown of Void Walker is reduced by 10 seconds.

Mark of the Void
Some of Vorazun’s abilities apply Mark of the Void to enemy Heroes for 6 seconds. If Vorazun or an allied Hero damages a marked Hero, the mark is consumed, dealing 154 (4%) damage and slowing by 60%, decaying over 2 seconds.

Heroics

R
Envoy of the Void
60 Mana | 80 Second cooldown
Vorazun targets an allied Hero in melee range. The allied Hero is Time-stopped and travels with Vorazun for up to 5 seconds. During this, Vorazun or her escortee can re-cast Envoy of the Void to end the effect early.

R
Shadow Fury
60 Mana | 50 Second cooldown
Vorazun becomes untargetable for 1.5 seconds and strikes all enemy Heroes with a mark or that have been marked in the last 6 seconds, dealing 254 (4%) damage and reapplying the marks.

Talents

Level 1

Shadow Guard
Hitting at least 2 or more allied Heroes with Veil of Shadows increases the duration of its shields by 5 seconds.
!Quest: Gathering Regeneration Globes increases the shield value of Veil of Shadows by 10, up to 300.

Swift Vengeance
Consuming a Mark of the Void grants Vorazun or an allied Hero 30% increased movement speed for 3 seconds.

From the Shadows
If an allied Hero stealthed by Veil of Shadows consumes a mark, they are granted 15% Spell Power for 4 seconds.

Level 4

High-energy Blades
Passive: Crescent Strike’s area is increased by 15%.
!Quest: Whenever an enemy Hero is marked with Crescent Strike, its damage is increased by 10.

Note: Since you need to hit a minimum of 2 enemy Heroes with Crescent Strike to mark them, its minimum damage bonus is 20 per cast

Shadow Assault
Shadow Dash deals 144 (4%) damage to enemies ahead of her destination. For each enemy Hero hit by this, the cooldown of Shadow Dash is reduced by 1 second.

Twin Strike
Casting Crescent Strike summons a shade of Vorazun in her location that casts an untalented version of Crescent Strike after 0.75 seconds.

Level 7

Psionic Burst
Passive: The cooldown of Crescent Strike is increased by 1 second.
Marking an enemy Hero with Crescent Strike stuns them for 0.5 seconds.

Cauterize
Passive: The cooldown of Crescent Strike is increased by 1 second.
Marking an enemy Hero with Crescent Strike causes them to receive 50% less healing from all sources for 3 seconds.

Unstable Energy
When consumed, Mark of the Void slows nearby enemies by 60%, decaying over 2 seconds.

Level 10

(Heroics)

Level 13

Psionic Agility
15 Second cooldown
Vorazun flips over a marked enemy Hero or an enemy Hero that has been marked within the last 6 seconds.

Note: Functions similarly to Lunara’s “HAHAHAHAA”

Void’s Embrace
90 Second cooldown
Grant an allied Hero Unstoppable for 1 second.
Whenever a Mark of the Void is consumed, reduce the cooldown by 5 seconds.

Shadow Mending
While an allied Hero or Vorazun has shields from Veil of Shadows, they heal for 34 (4%) health per second.

Level 16

Shifting Shadows
Shadow Dash’s length is reduced by 40%. After casting Shadow Dash it can be cast again for free for the next 3 seconds.

Waning Flurry
12 Second cooldown
Vorazun throws her shadow scythe in a line, dealing 154 (4%) damage to enemies hit, marking them and leaving behind an image of Vorazun’s scythe at the end of its path. Image lasts 4 seconds. Moving over the image removes it and empowers Vorazun’s next cast of Crescent Strike, causing it to hit all enemies around Vorazun.

Deep Cloaking
Veil of Shadows’ stealth lasts an additional 5 seconds, but its cooldown is increased by 2 seconds.

Ensnaring Darkness
Marked enemy Heroes or enemy Heroes that have been marked within the last 6 seconds inside the area of Veil of Shadows are rooted for 1 second.

Level 20

Final Gambit
After casting Shadow Fury, for the next 2 seconds, Vorazun can blink to a struck enemy Hero. If the enemy Hero dies within 2 seconds of blinking to them, the cooldown of Shadow Fury is reset.

Covert Mission
Envoy of the Void resets the cooldown of Void Walker. Re-casting Envoy of the Void grants an untalented version of Void Walker to Vorazun’s escortee.

Plane Walker
Void Walker grants Vorazun 100% increased movement speed while active.

Umbral Assault
Passive: Vorazun can attack and cast abilities during Void Walker without ending its effect early.
Takedowns reduce the cooldown of Void Walker by 20 seconds.

Fluff

Synergies

Good with:

  • Zeratul
  • Kerrigan
  • Maiev
  • Kharazim
  • ETC
  • Garrosh
  • Diablo

Vorazun’s dive nature means she works well with Heroes she can assist when they dive in. Envoy of the Void is a great ability to also enable volatile allies such as Garrosh or ETC that sometimes need a little boost to properly engage.

Bad against:

  • Lunara
  • Nazeebo
  • Gul’dan
  • Varian
  • Tassadar
  • Diablo

Heroes that can reveal Vorazun and her allies or deal damage over time can shut down her stealth abilities. Heroes that have single-target CC also punish Vorazun as she has low health and is reliant on her stealth and mobility to stay alive.

Skins

Viper Covert Ops
(Legendary Vorazun skin fitting the style of previous Viper skins.)
Backstory: When the Viper Organization does not use brute force, their elite squadron of infiltrators scrutinize their enemies under the cover of darkness. Their leader, Vorazun has never failed a mission, but she does like to play with her food.

Nomad Warrior
(Epic Vorazun skin with Persian robes and a Scimitar-scythe.)
Backstory: The vast expanses of Luxoria are home to many nomadic desert tribes, some with knowledge on the occult powers of the void.

Interactions

Start of game

Vorazun: You think us fools?

Alarak: Yes, but that is irrelevant.

Ally: “You…”

Vorazun: “Halt your aversion. In this time, the last thing you want is more enemies.”

Vorazun: “I despise you and everything you stand for. Do not betray me.”

Ally: (“You…” response)

Ally: “Are you ready?”

Vorazun: “The last thing a dark templar isn’t, is unprepared.”

Vorazun: “I assume you are ready.”

Ally: (“Are you ready?” response)

Patch Notes

Week 1
Veil of Shadows

  • Cooldown: 11 → 10 seconds.
  • Duration: 6 → 5 seconds.

Shadow Dash

  • Cooldown: 13 → 12 seconds.
    I thought a 13 second cooldown might’ve been a bit too long (and unappealing to look at.)

Void Walker

  • Cooldown: 40 → 50 seconds.
  • Now breaks if Vorazun casts an ability or attacks during it
    (Will have talent for its original effect)

Week 2

  • Added talents!

Crescent Flurry

  • Name changed to Crescent Strike (Blame my affinity for naming things)

Week 3

  • Changed talents a bit according to judging. Thanks!
  • More supportive talents
  • Tweaks to existing talents, removal of some.
  • Fluff!
3 Likes
2

Fantastic take on Vorazun, I find it funny you just helped me on my forum try to figure out stats, and I myself needed that to work on my own Vorazun. Your take on it is certainly different to fit into the support niche but I really like it. Wouldn’t mind your version either :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

Total Score - 18/20

Unrelated to any category, I’d appreciate some more clarification on how Crescent Flurry works - I’m not clear on how an enemy would be hit by both strikes at once. Are the arcs greater than 180 degrees and you can hit people with both in the side area, or is there a slight delay so you can run past an enemy hitting them with both?

Creativity - 4/5
Building a dark templar as a support could be creative, but I think every Vorazun concept I’ve ever seen was a support so I don’t think it warrants extra points for that. The mark on landing abilities system you have in the trait has popped up quite a bit in the game itself (Imperius and Orphea), but allowing allies to trigger the mark and giving it an extra interaction with a more nuanced stealth implementation (as opposed to the usual perma-stealth) is a cool idea. Veil of Shadows and Shadow Dash are both very basic but useful, and Crescent Flurry is an interesting idea for how to implement a damage ability given the dual-scythe psiblade dark templars use. Envoy of the Void is a really weird ability with potentially huge power, and I think it’s a great choice for a mobile melee support. Shadow Fury, on the other hand, is a very straightforward implementation of what I think to be an iconic dark templar (and Vorazun in particular) ability; it works well and I think it’s fine in the kit, but it’s not revolutionary. Overall, the kit has some unique ideas, but a lot of it feels expected for a Vorazun support.

Cohesiveness - 5/5
I see a lot of thought out synergy and cohesion between abilities in the kit, and toward the overall identity. Crescent Flurry can be a dangerous ability to use and get full value out of, but the Stealth options present in Veil of Shadows and Void Walker give Vorazun safer ways to land it. Envoy of the Void works particularly well with Vorazun’s Stealth options and Shadow Dash, transporting a dangerous ally to an opportune position. Of course, the artificial cohesion of abilities generating marks to reduce the cooldown of Void Walker ties the kit together on top of that. On top of all of that, every ability and synergy furthers the hero’s identity of assisting allies to dive into the enemy team, providing extra damage and Stealth while drawing attention to Vorazun that can be countered with Void Walker.

Thematic - 5/5
Not much to say here. Every ability feels like it belongs on Vorazun, as a skilled and quick warrior who bends the shadows to aid her team.

Interaction - 4/5
Nothing in Vorazun’s kit looks detrimental to her team, and any team trolling potential of Envoy in the Void is avoidable and pales in comparison to what Garrosh already does. I think Vorazun’s powerful trait Stealth and potential to spam it, added with a strong dash and a heroic that grants her temporary invulnerability and usually a free Stealth afterward, might be a little frustrating for the enemy team, but nothing to complain about on its own. My biggest concern is how dangerous an allied Stealth mechanic can be in the base kit; it tends to be reserved for heroics on other heroes. A 6 second duration is kind of long but I think doesn’t leave much room for uninteractive full-team ganks, so it’s again a minor concern. I feel that both of these put together warrants a small penalty.

1 Like
4

Thanks for the feedback!

Imagine a Maiev Fan of Knives, that hits both in front of Maiev, and behind her at the same time. That’s Crescent Flurry.

I agree with this, and my design philosophy around these abilities is that their core is very simple, and thus can be easily expanded upon and molded by talent choices into unique and interesting abilities. Furthermore I think that the simpler an ability gets, the more applications and more flexible it will become. (Take Zeratul’s Void Seeker; It can be talented to be a mobility tool, and a ‘mark for death’.)

I think I will look into making this Heroic more interesting.

Overall, without talents, you are right to say that stuff is simple at the moment, but I will expand upon them creatively.

5

guess its my turn huh, well here I go. Im gonna rank each tier individually in a vacuum and then give some real overall scores at the end
also sorry for a lack of capital letters, my shift button broke.

level 1
5/5
Shadow Guard and Swift Vengeance seem just about perfect
Death Mark feels stronger then the other 2 talents on this tier. Roaming around the map already seems like the go to strategy and with stealth and a dash it would be pretty easy to stack this. I’d lower its damage increase just a bit.

level 4
4.5/5
everything here seems powerful but inconsistent which is totally fine.
High-energy Blades might be just a little weak, I imagine its pretty difficult to stack, needing to put your self in a dangerous spot to get a stack. Id give it something tiny baseline with out needing to stack so its not worthless if you only ever get 2 or 3 stacks.

level 7
3.5/5
strong talents with trade off’s here
Psionic Burst and Cauterize feel just about right. and are pretty good talents

Unstable Energy however is potentially super OP
Now this talent works 1 of 2 ways and idk which
way 1 - the exploding enemy takes mark of the void damage (154) and then everyone around them takes the talent damage (115)
way 2 - its mark of the voids damage (154) + the talents damage (115) = (269 damage)

if its way 1 then only 115 damage isnt all that high on just 1 target but if you mark 2 enemies next to each-other then thats 230 damage to each of them which is just under jaina cone of cold damage (275 damage with chill) and if you ever hit a 3rd enemy then you basically win a team fight by your self (~‭690‬-‭1,035‬ damage (depending on if all 3 over lap or just 2). the damage increses exponentially when all the AOEs are inside the other AOE, this is why whitemanes healing is completely absurd despite searing lash only doing 82-164 damage. like a 3 way venn diagram with all circles touching or like if kael’thas puts a living bomb on 3 people and they all stand right next to eachother except this is even more insane because everything explodes instantly with a Q or some other help which could reasonably happen with a good ETC mosh pit, zarya gravity bomb or anything maiev does.
if its way 2 then Vorazun snaps her fingers and half the universe is obliterated
something should be done to stop the damage from exponentially increasing.

the slow is fine tho : )

level 13
4/5
Psionic Agility and Void’s Embrace are both cool, im kind of a sucker for activatable talents : p

Ambuscade Is pretty good in a vacuum but has some pretty earth shattering synergies with other talents (Death Mark at 1 and unstable energy assuming it gets fixed at 7). I would move this to level 16

level 16
5/5
these are all great
Waning Flurry is a little over complicated for a talent in my opinion but im gonna give it the ok anyway

level 20
4.5/5
cool talents!
Umbral Assault feels slightly weak compared to the other 20s. maybe it can give void walker an extra .5 duration or maybe some cooldown reduction?

Creativity: 4/5
everything is cool and seems very well thought out for the most part. shadow guard at level 1 in particular is easily my favorite. if I had to criticize something it would be that there are a few to many talents that just deal damage for my liking.

Cohesiveness: 3/5
for the talents anyway, the base kit is super cool. theres a ton of damage talents and only 2 pre 20 support talents. as a support hero i would have liked to see an entire talent row dedicated to support (other than level 1).

Thematic: 5/5
seems pretty dark templar like to me. some mobility, mountains of damage (not counting that one talent) and some annoying stealth.

Interaction: 5/5
seems like the perfect support to roam around with. I imagine vorazun and a kerrigan roaming the map for kills and pretty much every talents supports that play style. theres a good number of synergies throughout the talents

some thoughts on your base kit. (none of this affected my review)
mark of the void is probably my favorite ability and what I think really makes this hero stand out from the rest of the hots cast as someone to roam with. however its slow is both to strong and I think even a little unnecessary in the base kit and would make that in to a talent. 90% is reeealy high, even if it decays. johanna’s slow is 60% decaying over 2 seconds and as a tank its her job to lock down enemies and stukov’s slow goes up to 50% (70% with trait).

envoy of the void seems very weak. mechanically, the 2 second channel means you cant use it to save someone and then stealth away which would have fit the support theme well, the 0.5 second silence makes ambushing an enemy, not impossible but much less effective, and then the 80 second cool down is I think twice as high as it should be.

anyway feel free to say something if you need any clarification c :
goodluck!

1 Like
6

looking back, i might have been a little harsh on the 7 talents, that one might have been super broken but the others are not bad. I chaged the rating :slight_smile:

1 Like
7

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

Total - 15/20

Creativity - 3/5
The basic abilities of the kit present a simple yet well constructed gameplay loop that would be interesting to play. I do have major concerns with Shadow Dash, however. The ability serves as the best and easiest way to mark enemies for her trait, but other than that it doesn’t perform much of a role in the kit. Not only is it incredibly simple, but the talents you promised are lackluster and don’t meaningfully change the ability. The other abilities seem alright, as do the heroics. The talent tree has some interesting talents within it, but some suffer from superficial designs, and because of the problems that will be discussed in cohesiveness, each talent starts to feel less interesting and impactful (therefore making the player feel like they have less of an impact on their character’s direction). Several talents are additionally quite simplistic in their design, which would be fine, but they ultimately pile the weight on the already crumbling talent tree. Key talents are Swift Vengeance, all of Tier 3, Deep Cloaking (especially this one), and Plane Walker all contribute to the problem. The interactions and especially the skins are all well done.

Cohesiveness - 4/5
The kit does not have any internal ability interactions, which is fine, because the external ability interactions do work well together. The heroics each offer a unique way to take the character, giving me Kharazim vibes. I have no complaints for the base kit. I do, however, feel that the talent tree could use some restructuring. The entire tree has a lack of reasoning behind each tier, and build paths within it are rare and often ephemeral. Most kits start to blend together in their purpose outside the divide between assassin and support, and the fact some talent tiers have mechanical bleeding doesn’t help the concept out. The first 3 tiers of talents suffer from this prominently, with the talents starting to bleed together and ultimately feeling less interesting in the end. The talents that are unique from their companions, such as Shadow Assault and Unstable Energy, are not only situational but are quite plain, further blurring the entire talent tree into a amalgamous form.

Thematic - 5/5
The concept is very much on point with Vorazun, and I am quite pleased how you not only captured her multi-faceted role in the story, but also made her feel very different from Zeratul without breaking the Nerazim motif. Altogether, this was very good. Also, the Viper skin would look really awesome.

Interaction - 4/5
The character does have plenty of ways enemies can disrupt her and her enemies, and being a melee support is not always easy. I do like the need for her to stay active to stay stealthy. My only real issue with the basic kit is that his Veil of Shadows being an AoE stealth and solid shield might be a bit overwhelming to deal with. If we compare it with medich’s stealth talent, this one blows that talent out of the water. Since it is AoE, perhaps cutting down the duration would help out a bit to make it less horrifying. Secondly, I think her talents might contribute just a bit too much CC potential to the character, which is extremely dangerous when you consider the character can slip into Invisibility quickly and potentially frequently within a fight. The 1 second root, the one second stun, several high amount slows, all can get quite overwhelming to play against, hence to cut in score.

8

Vorazun - 84/100

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