This is a character is for the CDC here CDC #13 - Cult/Classic and i chose to go with a Classic (sadly not Diablo 2 as it barely cuts off god damn it!) and that hero is Freya the Valkyrie from The Lost Vikings and someone Baelog has a huge crush on, shes an aggressive healer similar to Whitemane who buffs her abilities via her trait while in the thick of combat.
This should definitely interact with hero takedowns in some way–this plays too hard into laning to properly heal–and that’s not good on a main healer.
This heroic seems very scary–double damage is insane on any hero except for like, Lt. Morales–and would significantly help with reverse sweeps. This probably shouldn’t target self so that characters can focus down this hero to prevent this heroic.
This could be on a much shorter cooldown–if a bit annoying for allies.
This completely breaks the character. Reverse sweeps would happen 100% of the time since double damage makes takedowns so much easier. Rework this talent.
This shouldn’t reset heroic cooldowns.
Other than the changes above this is a really cool concept! I can’t wait to see more!
I might not be qualified for this, but I’ll share my thoughts anyway.
Q - This is not very potent, though she does have another healing ability, so ehhhh. You should however give it a bit more umpf, if you want W to feel like a single-use in fights.
W - Uhh boy, this ability is… Situational but potent. First of all, is there the issue of it relying on her being in a lane. This could be any lane, but it really limit the use of the ability, as you would have to visit a lane every so often to recharge. This could especially be a problem on maps like Hanamura, where the objective is far away from any minions. Secondly there’s an issue with the healing. 205 aoe is fine and manageable, but when you start getting the stacks… I count 1205 healing to who’s nearby. Not only is that 25 healing more than Rehgars Ancestral Healing, but it’s an aoe and you don’t have to wait 1 second. Though the stacks do drop after leaving combat (but that only makes the first problem worse and the last problem slightly better). Also is this a mount replacement?
My point is that it’s too hard to rely on it in the important fights, as you would be able to use it as a possibly potent heal once, if the stacks haven’t depleted already. There are ofcourse some maps that allow for this ability to be used frequently, like Tomb of the Spider Queen.
I’d say that you should just turn down the healing a bit and make it rely a bit more on heroes and slightly less on minions. (Also, I really like this ability, it really gets the idea of a healer-valkyrie-type-character.)
R1 - Feels sorta like Kharazims Divine Palm doesn’t it?
I have a possible replacement idea: She calls back all nearby dead allied heroes for 6-12 seconds. Then the level 20 talent could that there also appears a number of “minions” equal to the amount of stacks she has of Valkyries Ride, or it could be based on how many minions died near her in the last 1-2 minutes or something. They would grant xp though.
Welp, that’s my take on it. Good luck and stuff.
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14/20
Keep in mind that I am includeing shields as hps here sense using your trait as a supplement to her healing makes the most sense with the rest of her kit.
Creativity: 4/5 (+0)
As promised, here are your free 0.4 (rounded down) bonus points for choosing healer. Most everything is nice and unique. I particularly like her trait. E however, is dangerously close to just being blaze’s dash.
Cohesiveness: 2/5
Im unsure how exactly I should be playing Freya. Her most reliable heal (Q) suggests that you should be hanging back and taking things slowly due to its over time nature giving it very low HPS. Trait and E want you to be agressive in order to get the most value. E wants you to be in lane attempting to clear minions with your lackluster waveclear and then quickly run over to the teamfight to use that jiucy aoe heal (this would make a neat talent tho if you could hold on to the changes untill you use them). Trait and W work well together, Q almost works with Trait and W and then E almost wants you to do the opposite of what Trait and W wants you to do. Her basic abilites do make her very powerful in lane and when pushing with the team but laneing phase just dosent last all that long in hots. Siegeing with the team is the only place where every ability makes sense and create a powerful kit but that also dosnet happen very often and not even in every game.
If you want her to be really good in teamfights id consider ways to interact with enemies to increse your healing out put. If you want her to destroy ppl in lane thats cool to, just make sure her talents let her transition in to an enviroment where people either need no healing at all or all the healing in the world at a momments notice.
A toolbox design does work very well on a healer (brightwing being a good example) but each ability still has to be more generally useful.
Thematic: 5/5
Ill be honest. I had a hard time finding information on Freya but all the other hero concepts I found for her had healing elemnts and its easy to imagine a valkyrie fighting things sooooo full points?
Interaction: 3/5
everything is nice and fair to play against for the most part. Extra life still has the potential to reverse wipe teams even with the 60% nerf. Its gotta have some delays on it like auriel’s rez has or something. Additionaly I think alot of the reason why rez is strong still apply here. A team puts their abilites on cooldown in order to take out a hero. Then that hero is revived and no longer has to worry about the cooldowns that were used on them. Even though they only have 7 seconds some heroes can still do alot in that time.
I know you had trouble making this one so it hurts me soul to say that some things may need a bit of reworking D:
Updates for Week 2 is up along with some changes to how her Extra Life heroic is namely nerfing it to s.h.i.t more.
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Total Score - 14/20
Creativity - 3/5
Starting off, Blessing of the Valkyrie is a fine ability that works well to start establishing Freya as an aggressive healer, offering buffs for continued fight presence. Valkyrie’s Light feels very similar to Rehgar’s Chain Heal, just changed to decay w/ jumps and heal over time instead. Rise to Valhalla is fine as a charged AoE heal with a tradeoff for movement speed if she holds stacks. Valiant Charge is also a fine ability, helping Freya aggress while charging her trait. Both Extra Life and Reload Checkpoint are more bland; Extra Life feels like a much worse Divine Palm, and Reload Checkpoint is Chromie’s Temporal Loop but for allies. Reload Checkpoint is definitely the more interesting of the two.
On to talents, they have a few problems. First, generic talents like Block (Shield Arm), Cleanse (Cleansing Fortitude), and Spell Shield (Protect the Healer) are low-Creativity talents, and while different hero-specific variants can take these base mechanics and make them more interesting, none of the ones you used do. Spear of Light and Momentous Playthrough fall very close to generic talents (with Momentous Playthrough actually just being a Momentum talent), but they do a little better for how they work with Freya’s base mechanisms (she likes to basic attack to charge her trait, after all). Second, there are a few generic buff talents that just make abilities better at what they do: Bounce to Win and Legendary Mode fall in easily, while Teamwork!, Shield of Valour, and Boots of Speed are dangerously close. Otherwise, Group of 3, Escorting the Enemy, Extra Bag Space, and Speed Hacking are all nice talents that add extra dimensions to how Freya’s abilities are used.
To conclude, the base kit falls a little short in Creativity. Blessing of the Valkyrie is a fine start, but Valkyrie’s Light and Valiant Charge (plus both heroics) are both rather simple and bear close resemblance to abilities in the game without adding much to make the effects unique. Talents are a step worse, falling at just above half generic talents or bland upgrades, with the rest being solid. As a result, I’d say Creativity is just about average for this kit.
Cohesiveness - 2/5
Freya’s kit starts with a nice cohesive element; Blessing of the Valkyrie gives Freya more support potential while she is aggressive, Valiant Charge gets her into the fight and also gives basic attacks to charge Blessing of the Valkyrie, and then Valkyrie’s Light and Rise to Valhalla both build up Blessing of the Valkyrie while offering a usage for its effect. However, I have two problems that arise with the basic abilities. First, Freya isn’t very aggressive for an aggressive healer; her trait and two of her basic abilities are purely support. Look at Kharazim and Rehgar, two other aggressive healers, in comparison; they have more offensive and control tools, with less healing present. Second, Rise to Valhalla’s mechanics heavily encourage Freya to farm a lane for way too long (the opposite of what I want an aggressive healer to e doing), then rush to a fight hoping to land a heal before stacks dissipate; otherwise, she lacks a W ability. My suggestion to fix these problems is to fuse Rise to Valhalla into the trait, reworking it slightly; the new trait should build stacks similar to Blessing of the Valkyrie, but have a burst heal similar to Rise to Valhalla, and can feature the same movement speed reward for holding stacks that Rise to Valhalla does. This would then leave the W slot open for a more aggressive or control based ability; think Kharazim’s Deadly Reach or Rehgar’s Earthbind Totem. As a final touch, it would be cool to differentiate Valkyrie’s Light from Chain Heal more and make it more aggressive by adding some kind of AoE effect on every ally hit that either damages or debuffs enemies. This could open more dive-focused talent options that enhance Valkyrie’s Light’s support effect the more enemies are hit by its aggressive effect, just as an example.
As a side complaint, Extra Life and Reload Checkpoint are way too similar - both offer a single target support tool that helps an ally who is being focused. I think you should dump Extra Life since Reload Checkpoint is more interesting (Extra Life also has another problem I’ll address under Interaction), then replace it with a more aggressive heroic. Going back to Kharazim and Rehgar as examples of aggressive healers, they each have a single-target support heroic (Divine Palm and Ancestral Healing), but their other option is a more aggressive heroic with teamfight utility (Seven-Sided Strike and Bloodlust). There are plenty of options to take for giving Freya a more aggressive heroic, and I think replacing Extra Life with one would be much better for her kit.
For talents, I’m barely feeling any coherent builds. Basic attack support is very light, and some of the “synergy” talents go against each other (Speed Hacking and Spear of Light gives an awkward one ranged attack but the rest of the attacks are wasted from a range, making one talent or the other useless). There are some Valkyrie’s Light synergies, but it’s mostly just that Bounce to Win makes Shield of Valour and Teamwork! so much better they feel not worth taking without it. Extra Bag Space synergizes with Legendary Mode, but only because it feels almost impossible to pull of without the extra stacking power. The generic talents don’t fit into any builds, which can be fine as tech options - but with the lack of builds, they feel even worse. As a final complaint, having only two options for Tier 7 leaves the end of the tree feeling limited; heroes usually have 3 choices to cap off their build and overall power.
In conclusion, Freya is not well-equipped as an aggressive healer, leaving those elements feeling stranded from her kit; additionally, one of the heroics is very redundant with the other. Talent builds are lacking and synergies are few, which leaves this concept at below average cohesion overall.
Thematic - 5/5
This kit looks fine for Freya overall. I don’t think she has much to go on, but the standard Valkyrie references with plenty of classic video game references seems right at home for a TLV character. As for contest theme, yup Freya counts as a Classic hero, full points here.
Interaction - 4/5
Freya has few problems here, and I only have two complaints. First, the mechanic of Rise to Valhalla encourages her to farm lanes instead of skirmishing before teamfights; this will make her presence more lacking and generally frustrate her team (just think about a Butcher that lets you 4v5 the whole game because he wants to farm Fresh Meat). Second, Extra Life giving a MASSIVE amount of experience to the enemy team is a big mistake. This heroic feels like it’s more useful for the enemy team than Freya’s, risking giving them an experience spike for a much worse Divine Palm. Both of these problems are easily fixable, but I think they raise enough concern to warrant a point off.
Cheers for the good feedback mate always love it, luckily EXTRA LIFE IS DEAD! so no need to worry about any of that, the idea was humorous for video games but problematic to implement so better to be rid of it and just imagine it on a video game skin for Kharazim if it ever happens,
Anywho week 3 updated with mostly updates to the whole kit more than week 3 fluff lol.
Guess Ride of the Valkyries was copyrighted? xp
I will say though, it is a little more complicated in funtionality than one could’ve hoped for. Not that it wouldn’t have manageable mechaics ingame, but rather that you kinda have to read it a few times to get it, and it would probably feel a little clunky. It does however feel more unique than extra life.
imo
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Overall Score
Creativity - 3/5
Cohesiveness - 4/5
Thematic - 5/5
Interaction - 5/5
Total - 17/20
Creativity - 3/5
The character’s base kit is mostly alright, but I am concerned that it feels a little too derivative overall. While every specific effect is unique technically, every effect is another already in the game modified slightly. While this is fine for one or two abilities, having all three of the basic abilities and even the direction behind the trait being fairly derivative feels like the character doesn’t offer much new and exciting for players to play around with. The Q is HoT Chain Heal, the W is Johanaa’s spinning hammers, the E is Blaze’s Charge that stuns you and interacts with the trait more. The heroics also fail to really offer that much uniqueness here. The playstyle of an aggressive healer is nothing new with Auriel and Whitemane dominating the niche, and the bursty heal identity feels like an isolated Auriel mechanic as a trait. I think she could have an interesting identity in a dive comp where she focused around healing and defending allies close to her while she’s diving an enemy, like how her trait and E seem to be going, but it needs work to bring that out more. The talents are a bit more interesting, but I still see several examples where the character relies on tried concepts, and the new talents never really offer anything that blows the audience away. Best ones include Teamwork!, Spear of Light, Legendary Mode, and Cleansing Fortitude. Weakest talents are definitely Rise to Valhalla, Momentous Playthrough, Protect the Healer, and Easy Mode?
Cohesiveness - 4/5
The base kit works together moderately well to emphasize a frontline healer, though I think more can be done to cement this identity. The talent tree has many elements that feel like pieces of a build, which is nice, but it also has outlier talents that feel tossed in with no relevance or relation to the other builds in any interesting way. Rise to Valhalla, Momentous Playthrough, Protect the Healer, Spear of Light, and Speed Hacking all feel weird. I think there was an attempt at a Trait build here, but I don’t think it really works out to make the character feel unique or interesting.
Thematic - 5/5
While we see very little of Freya in the base The Lost Vikings games, we can assume what she would play like based on her story, depiction, and relation to the trio. I think this kit emerges as a good depiction of the character, but I think you could double down more on the aggressive, viking attitude that is shown in the game more.
Interaction - 5/5
I’m not seeing very much to complain about within the base kit, as everything seems like it has a good amount of counterplay and skill use. The fact she is a close range, aggressive healer makes her vulnerable, so the Freya player will need to be very careful in how they position and when they engage. I think these principles will be key in any future rework you may decide to do for the character.
Updated some talents to final week, couldn’t do much base kit wise.
Damian - 79/100
Creativity: 6/10
Cohesiveness: 7/10
Thematic: 10/10
Interaction: 10/10
(+1 Thoughtfulness, +0 Game Fluidity)