[CDC] Rakanishu, Fallen Demigod

Hero and Skin Suggestions
1

This is my first CDC entry, so bear with me.

Franchise: Diablo
First Apperance: Diablo 2
Class: Melee Bruiser

Rakanishu is a notorious Carver warrior that guarded the Carin Stones near the Rogue Monastery. Many a would be hero was felled by his blade and Fallen warriors can still be heard chanting his name as they throw themselves into battle.

In the Nexus Rakanishu is a slippery bruiser designed to draw aggro to maximize the area damage of his Lightning Enhanced ability and then slip away when the situation becomes too threatening.

Trait: Extra Fast: Rakanishu has a default walking speed 10% faster than other heroes.

Q: Chilling Strike: Enhances Rakanishus next basic attack, dealing extra damage and slowing the unit hit.

W: Flee!: If Rakanishu has been damaged by an enemy hero within the last 3 seconds he can activate this ability to gain 50% move-speed and run uncontrollably in the opposite direction of his current trajectory for 1 second. Rakanishu gains 50 armor during this duration.

E: Lightning Enchanted: Passive: Whenever Rakanishu is damaged by an enemy hero he emits 6 charged bolts that deal minor, but not negligible, damage to the first enemy they hit. (passive will have a very small cd to prevent super high attack speed heroes from filling the whole screen with blots) Active: on manual activation emit 12 charged bolts

R1: Carver Encampment: Places a Carver encampment at the target location, summoning 5 Carver warriors to the location. The Carver Warriors last up to 20 seconds, will prioritize enemy heroes and will cast Flee! when a nearby carver is killed.

R2: Carin Stone: Places a Carin stone at the target location for 10 seconds. Recasting this ability (CD 2 seconds, 3 charges) will fire a bolt of lightning from the Carin Stone that pierces all units and deals damage.

Talent Tree

Level 1
Hellspark (E, Quest): Damage enemy heroes with charged bolts to gain Hellspark stacks, up too 100. Lightning Enchanted gains .20 damage per stack, and upon completion spawns an additional Charged bolt when hit.

Prolonged Flight (W): Increase the duration of Flee! by 33%

Spectral Hit (Q): Chilling strike deals 100% increased damage and refunds mana when damaging non heroes.

Level 4:

Stone Skin (Activate): Gain 15 Armor for 4 seconds, but lose the effects of Extra Fast for the duration

Demonic Endurance (W): Flee! Regenerates 25% of Rakanishus missing health per second while active.

Leeching Strikes (Q): Chilling strikes returns 50% of the damage dealt as life to Rakanishu.

Level 7
Combat Instinct (passive): Rakanishu gains 5% increased attack speed every second he is in combat with enemy heroes, up to an additional 25%, this bonus wears off after 2 seconds without interacting with enemy heroes.

Lightning Rod (E): Hitting an enemy with Charged Bolt marks them with Conductivity for 2 seconds, hitting them with an additional charged bolt will consume the mark and deal bonus magic damage.

Sustained Charge (E): Lightning Enchanteds active gains a second charge but its cooldown is increased by 2 seconds.

Wide Swing (Q): Chilling strikes deals 50% damage in an area around the target, the slow and talents still apply, at half effectiveness.

Level 13
Desperation (W): Flee! now grants unstoppable for it’s duration.

Cold Enchanted (E) Charged bolts now slow enemies hit by 10%, decaying over 1 second.

Leeching Static (E) Hitting an enemy with a charged bolt restores a small amount of health to Rakanishu

Charged Blade (Autos): Rakanishus auto attacks also release 2 charged blots.

Level 16
Cursed Strikes (Q): Chilling Strikes lowers the targets armor by 15% for 3 seconds.

Sapping Electricity (E): Charged bolts deal an additional 2.5% of the opponents maximum health as magic damage

Easy Target (Q): If Chilling strike effects an enemy already under a movement impairing effect it silences in addition to its slow.

Misdirection (W) Flee! can be recast once at any point during its duration and Rakanishu will move in the direction cast for the remainder of the ability.

Level 20
Fallen Shaman (R1): Increases the duration of Carver encampment by 10 seconds, in addition Carver Encampment now summons 2 fallen Shaman that attack from range and revive any slain Carvers

Chain Lightning: (R2): Hitting enemy heroes with Carin Stone causes the lightning to fork (think Cassia Q)

Fanaticism (Active): Activate to increase nearby allies move and attack speed for 4 seconds.

Teleport (Active): If Rakanishu is under 33% hp he can use this abilty to teleport a short distance. Not usable if he is above 33%.

3 Likes
2

I really like this one so far :smiley:
Just a random thought, it could be cool if you could redirect Es lightning with its activation.

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Week 1 Judgement

Rakanishu is one of my favorites, and I’m so glad someone decided to do it!

Catagory Rating
Creativity 4/5
Cohesiveness 3/5
Thematic 5/5
Interaction 3/5
Overall 15/20

Creativity
4/5

Rakanishu is an extremely bold choice that definitely pays off, as he’s not from the expected universes.

Cohesiveness
3/5

Rakanishu almost feels like a bruiser rather than an assassin since he almost requires getting hit to do damage. It’d be great if he had a little bit of control over his disengage to prevent getting out of position, that way he can make some strategic movements to get back into the fight.

Thematic
5/5

Rakanishu feels true to his origin, and is almost as if he where ported directly from Diablo 2. Full points here.

Interaction
3/5

There are some glaring problems with his kit. Starting with his W and E, they’re easily exploitable.
His W could be exploited as a dash if you simply face the opposite direction before activating the skill, acting as a dash towards the enemy, even though it’s uncontrollable
His E is super good against heroes with high attack speed like Tracer, or if he gets multiple heroes attacking him at the same time, there would be an insane amount of damage potential from the charged bolts.
There are two seperate movement speed increases in his kit. Perhaps if his trait was different that would fix the issue. His Flee makes him untargetable, which means his lightning can’t proc. Maybe instead, he should get damage reduction.

Additional Feedback

Without damage numbers to go off of, I don’t have a lot to work with as far as how effective abilities are. If you don’t want to do numbers, that’s okay but an approximate amount of damage would be helpful as well. I didn’t let it affect my score too much so I’ll leave it as an afterthought.

4

heard you wanted talaents, so you got talents also made some changes to his base kit based on your feedback.

Hes been changed to a bruiser, because he wants to get hit, it makes more sense for him to be in this role. Although being a carver, his health pool will likely still be on the lower end for the class.

Upon you noting rightfully that Flee! can be exploited and used in a variety of different ways I’ve removed the activatable part of his trait. I like the idea of exploiting Flee! as a form of skill expression, but if he wants to use it to close a gap he shouldn’t be able to have a different ability to escape.

I’ve, also adjusted Flee! itself to grant armor instead of untargetable, giving him more survivabilty in a way that allows him to still get value from his E.

Also have given his E passive a small internal cooldown, specifically so heroes like Tracer dont break the game and fill the whole screen with lightning.

5

I like the direction this hero is heading, gj TheBentOne. Good skills, fun talents, though demonic endurance at lvl 4 and cursed strikes at 16 might be a hair overtuned, but i like the base idea of them. :grin:

1 Like
6

Just tune down the amount, 25% to 20% and there you go :slight_smile:

1 Like
7

Thanks so much for the feedback guys. I changed the two talents in question. Demonic Endurance now heals based on missing health rather than maximum health and I reduced cursed strikes to a 15 armor reduction down from 25.

2 Likes
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Creativity 4/5

I love the choice of character. I definitely approve of picking something not obvious for this contest.

Cohesiveness 3/5

I think the kit still suffers from a little confusion. So far, the talents feel like he mostly wants to stay in the middle of combat and fight, but from your description and the Flee! ability, it seems like you envision him as a partial hit-and-run character. Mostly, I think having an ability solely used for running away seems off with the rest of his kit. Just a thought.

Thematic 5/5

It’s a simple theme to be fair, but Rakanishu carries it well.

Interaction 4/5

He has a lot of fun tools for harassing and interacting with characters. Not too much counterplay, but that’s hard to do in the first place.

Overall 16/20

He’s got a solid, mostly no-frills kit that seems like fun. I can imagine trying to trigger as much Lightning Enchanted as possible and laughing as the enemy team is whittled down.

But there are some things to think about and look at. Flee! Is naturally an ability that needs some consideration. Anything that removes control of your character should be handled carefully. There are no real problems as it stands, but just something to think about. Lightning Enchanted is kind of unclear in terms of who it targets and how it spreads. Remember that there is very little randomness in this game. Adding some logic to how the bolts spread, even if they simply spread out from Rakanishu, would add clarity to the ability.

From what I can tell, I have no real issues with the talents. Similar tiers serve similar functions, which is pretty solid design. No real issues from what I can tell.

9

Overall Score

Creativity - 2/5

Cohesiveness - 3/5

Thematic - 3/5

Interaction - 2/5

Total - 10/20

Before I get started, you lost a point in each field and 2 in Thematic just from not having any week 3 fluff. If you don’t rectify this by Week 4, you will be invalidated from the contest.

Creativity - 2/5

The character is extremely basic in its abilities and its talents, almost being like a HotS character from it’s beta. For example, Extra Fast is an incredibly simplistic and boring trait, and would just as well work as a really weak mount replacement. Chilling Strike and his first heroic further this dreadfully boring situation, and I think all three could be amped up. His W and E hold the burden of a long of the gameplay loop and make the character more interesting, and the second heroic really shows you have the creative potential if you focus on it. I think shifting the E to the trait and giving Rakanishu a totally new ability would do wonders for the design, and spice up the Q a little bit. Also, I think there should be a way to force your opponents to attack you, either by making it a threat to not attack you or if you want to be lazy you could try to do a taunt. The talents are not inherently bad, but this level of simplistic design was left behind quite some time ago. Just making a specific aspect of an ability better does not cut it now-a-days, and so I recommend adding inter-ability interactions and more interesting boosts with conditions. You have a distinct lack of gameplay altering talents as well, with the exception of Demonic Endurance, Combat Instinct, Lightning Rod, and Charged Blades. Everything else is pretty flat in terms of design.

Cohesiveness - 3/5

The kit works decently towards the idea of a bruiser-type character, though there are some things in the design that feel a bit out of place. Outside of thematic purposes, the first heroic doesn’t really make any sort of sense on a bruiser, as it doesn’t help you perform your job very well. The main gameplay loop seems to be: try to get brought low, dealing damage to everyone, and the Flee away. My only concern here is that I’m afraid Rakanishu might be a bit too easy to ignore. The talents have some definite build paths available, but most seem superficial, and the lack of talents that tie two abilities together or that differentiate out different playstyles makes the talent tree seem taped together.

Thematic - 3/5

I do appreciate how closely the character design is to base Rakanishu. I have no big concerns with the design, though I think you have room to add more and elaborate on Rakanishu instead of just sticking to what is presented. The lost points are just from no week 3 content.

Interaction - 2/5

The kit overall doesn’t lack any major issues overall in the design theoretically, though there are a few problems across the character. The inability to control two of your abilities makes the character a bit volatile, which is problematic in and of itself, and relying on a group of summons for your first heroic presents it’s own deep design issues. I won’t keep beating this dead horse, but uncontrollable summons that just serve as an uninteractive deterrent and bonus damage is problematic from a fundamental design level. Some talents are also problematic from an interaction standpoint, such as Demonic Endurance being a very large heal on a shortish cooldown that feels almost core to the character. A lot of the Chilling Strike talents tread the line between uninspiring and uninteractive. I would consider taking a look at the talents and considering how you would feel against each piece, as well as looking at other, modern talent trees.