CDC#12 Antonidas, Commander of the Scourge army

Hero and Skin Suggestions
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ANTONIDAS, COMMANDER OF THE SCOURGE ARMY

Hero role : Ranged assassin

Behind his well known wisedom Antonidas hides a frightful and vainglorious lust for power. Knowing his weakness for power Arthas uses Frostmourne to corrupt him and gifts him new devastating magic abilities. He is now a fervent agent of the Scourge, he brings destruction to the remaining forces resisting Arthas. All mighty and feared by all, he sometimes wonders if such power was worth his wisedom … (his doubts will be shown via his talents)

Antonidas does not have an auto-attack ability but instead rely on his Arcane skills to deal damage.

Primary Abilities :

  1. Shadow Bolt : Press the hotkey (without clicking with the mouse) to cast a shadow bolt missile to the current mouse cursor location. Can be cast while moving and in any direction. This is the primary attack of Antonidas. It has no cooldown. While this skill seems standard and basic, it is actually reworked in a way that makes it really fun to play. Think of it like a machinegun in a FPS game : you have to correctly aim for enemy units while they have to avoid your shots. The damage dealt is low but you can spam it and even move while shooting. It replaces the auto-attack ability of “normal” Heroes.
  2. Time Rift : Creates a magical device altering time and slightly reducing movement speed of enemy units while increasing your arcane missiles speed. 30 sec CD Has to be used wisely with your arcane missiles shots.
  3. Infernal Bomb : A faster and stronger missile than the regular arcane missile. Can only be shot forward. 60 sec CD This is simply a better version of your arcane missile with some restrictions. I want the player to stay focus on his skillshots micromanagement.

Heroic Abilities :

  1. Death Ray : Link Antonidas to a targeted allied Hero with a beam. The beam moves according to both Heroes movement and deals damage to any enemy units crossing it. It consumes mana point whenever it deals damage. Unique skill requiring the coordination of two players to be very effective.
  2. Demoniac Shockwave : After a few seconds of casting time Antonidas releases a burst of energy radiating outward, damaging and slowing all nearby enemy units. Antonidas puts himself in a dangerous situation while casting this spell but once casted he can easily shoot slowed enemy units. Casting it in a time rift device will make Antonidas harder to attack and will slow even more nearby enemy units.

Hero Trait :

  1. Meditation : While still Antonidas enters in a deep meditation phase, increasing his arcane missiles speed. The longer he stays in meditation the faster his arcane missiles are.

You may assume that Antonidas only has standard and non-creative skills, but what makes him unique is that he has no auto-attack ability : he has to use his shadow bolt missiles skill as his primary attack !

As an amateur mapmaker, here is a bonus video of hero : - YouTube

Not gonna lie, I made this Hero a while ago but I slightly reworked him so he is now perfectly fitting for HotS ! (all of his stats are still to be set according to HotS standards ofc)

Talents :

• Faster than shadow : Increases shadow bolt missiles speed.

• Scourge Warrior : Your shadow bolt missiles creates skeleton warriors upon impact. You can have a maximum of ten skeleton warriors.

• Oblivion Storm : Your infernal blast creates an storm when exploding, dealing damage over time to nearby enemy units.

• Corruption : Your shadow bolt missiles also reduce the enemy units armor points. Each hit reduces armor by 1. Can stack up to 10 times.

• Scourge Archer : Whenever Antonidas casts a spell it also summons a skeleton archer . You can have a maximum of five skeleton archers.

• Arcane Shield : An arcane shield surrounds Antonidas and protects him from any incoming damage. The shield has a small amount of HP but regenerates fast.

• Faster than shadow : Increases even more your shadow bolt missiles speed.

• Minions Madness : Increases the damage dealt by your Scourge minions.

• Time Rift Teleportation : Antonidas can teleport himself to his time rift device.

• Death Ray : Link Antonidas to a targeted allied Hero with a beam. The beam moves according to both Heroes movement and deals massive damage to any enemy units crossing it. It consumes mana point whenever it deals damage.

• Demoniac Shockwave : After a 2 seconds casting time Antonidas releases a burst of energy radiating outward, damaging and slowing all nearby enemy units.

• Faster than shadow : Increases even more your shadow bolt missiles speed.

• Time Rift Protection : Your time rift device protects allied units and reduces damage taken.

• Lightning Shield (you need to previously choose the Arcane Shield) : Sends lightning charges to any enemy units attacking Antodinas when he is under the protection of his arcane shield.

• Healing Missile : Your arcane bolt missiles heal any allied units they pass through.

• Feel the Power : Increases damage done by your arcane missiles and bombs.

• Wisedom : Increases your mana points regeneration.

• Long Beam : Increases the maximum length of the death ray beam.

• Healing Shockwave : Demoniac shockwave also heals nearby allied units.

• Ultimate Darkness Speed : Increases even more your shadow bolt missiles speed.

Healing talents are consequences of Antonidas doubts about serving the Scourge. A strong mind like his does not get corrupted by Frostmourne alone without some consent.

1 Like
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Its honestly a cool concept, but its lacking in theme, considering this Antonidas is Commander of the Scourge, but only has a single scourge/non-Arcane ability.It could be different if you can change the ability’s description while keeping the effect.

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thanks :slight_smile:
you are totally right ! i’m gonna change some of the descriptions

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Week 1 Judgement

Category Rating
Creativity 2/5
Cohesiveness 1/5
Thematic 1/5
Interaction 1/5
Overall 5/20

Creativity
2/5
I’m trying not to be too mean, but you it doesn’t feel like much effort was put into anything here. They’re all standard Arcane abilities. The Arcane Missile gattling gun sounds entertaining though

Cohesiveness
1/5
Okay, so here’s the thing… while your abilities TECHNICALLY can play into each other, it’s almost never going to happen, especially with Time Rift’s and Arcane Bomb’s INSANE cooldowns. Essentially what I see is Arcane Missiles and 3 ults. Slowing your foes with Time Rift would for sure help get those missiles to hit, but why though?

Thematic
1/5
This doesn’t follow the theme requirements for this CDC at all. Though he’s supposedly corrupted and such by Arthas, he doesn’t reflect that save for 1 heroic ability. Arcane missiles could have become shadow bolts and it would have been a better choice. You really have to represent how your character changes through his corruption with his abilities, otherwise you might as well just throw regular Antonidas here.

Interaction
1/5
Not only would this feel really bad to play, he’s also incredibly easily countered. If you Stun/silence him at all, he’s not doing anything especially with those insane cooldowns of his. At least other mages can auto attack if they get silenced for some reason.

Additional Feedback
I really appreciate that you took time to make a concept video, and I can see what you were aiming for, but I don’t feel like that concept could really work in a MOBA. Maybe perhaps you could change it so that way his q can be channeled while moving. Take Galls ult for example, where he fires a ton of shadow bolts. Just make it so it’s only castable in a direction of your choosing until it goes on cooldown, but you can move however.

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thx for your kind words Kyyteo !
Just one thing :
About my 1st spell I wrote :

  • The damage dealt is low but you can spam it and even move while shooting. It replaces the auto-attack ability of “normal” Heroes.

Then you say :

Maybe perhaps you could change it so that way his q can be channeled while moving.

So I can fairly assume that you didn’t even fully read my post. How do we call someone that assesses and judge something he doesn’t take the time to know ? Answer : an idiot.

And since my Q spell is also his primary attack it obviously wouldnt get affected by silence.

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Hey Acaraco! Just letting you know that the misunderstanding on Kyyteo’s end has been noted and will be addressed. He would have updated it himself already, but he’s been dealing with some IRL stuff and hasn’t gotten to it. There will be a positive point adjustment based on some misunderstandings and inconsistencies before final scores are tallied, whether Kyyteo is able to edit his post or I have to note them externally.

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Total Score - 9/20

Before I start, I want to say that you would’ve scored a lot higher if I were just judging your base kit, but your talent tree has a lot of problems and hurts your score a lot. I hope I provided good explanations for what parts need work and how you can improve it, but if anything is confusing or not clear, let me know and I can clarify.

Creativity - 1/5
Starting with your signature ability, I like the idea of a character that operates solely on spammable skillshots, and it’d be a first for HotS. Shadow Bolt isn’t very creative but it’s the cornerstone of a playstyle that is, so it gets a pass. Meditation is also kind of simple, but it fits into the mold so it also gets a pass. Time Rift is a great supportive ability for this playstyle, hampering enemies and giving Antonidas some help to confirm his Shadow Bolts. Infernal Bomb stands out as the worst from a Creativity perspective; Antonidas’s gameplay loop is throwing out line-based skillshots with Shadow Bolt, and this is just a different line-based skillshot on a big cooldown. It doesn’t really work for the playstyle you’re going for with the previous two abilities, but more on this in Cohesiveness. Death Ray is a pretty creative ability, and Demoniac Shockwave is bland but functional.

Your talents, however, suffer much more in terms of Creativity. Starting with the worst offender, repeating the same talent/talent effects multiple times is a red flag for your tree. The effect of Faster than Shadow and the slightly stronger Ultimate Darkness Speed should appear in your talent tree once maximum; in the MOBA format of HotS, it’s important for the options in your talent tree to be diverse and varied to create different builds, and you’ll notice no hero in the game already has the same talent more than once. Otherwise, your talents are all very basic in effect; Minions Madness, Feel the Power, and Wisedom are just basic number increases, for example. Just to provide some more direction, Corruption is a better talent because it adds a new effect that is useful to an existing ability instead of just increasing numbers, and it rewards chaining skillshots together. Time Rift Teleportation is also a good talent because it adds new functionality to an existing ability, making Antonidas think about how he wants to place Time Rift so that it will be good to teleport to but also get good effects on enemies. Other good talent choices could be to add conditions for number increases to work; for example, Muradin’s Thunder Strike talent just increases Thunder Clap’s damage, but only if he hits just one target with it, making him use the ability differently to make it stronger.

For your Creativity score, I would give your base kit a fairly high score with minor penalty for Infernal Bomb, but the talents are really bad from a Creativity perspective, and drag your score down much further. For Week 3, I would advise starting your talent tree over but keeping some talents like Corruption and Time Rift Teleportation; try referring to my examples above about talents that add new effects to abilities and ones that change how you use abilities to help come up with a good talent tree.

Cohesiveness - 2/5
Your base kit starts off strong for Cohesiveness, with Shadow Bolt as the signature ability and Meditation plus Time Rift both supporting it and its playstyle. However, the rest of the base kit starts to fall apart. Infernal Bomb kind of works, but having another line skillshot when your character’s main ability is a spammable line skillshot isn’t good for your playstyle and feels like a wasted ability slot. I would recommend another ability like Time Rift to replace it; something that supports his ability to spam Shadow Bolt, instead of awkwardly competing with it. Both of Antonidas’s heroics clash with this playstyle too; Death Ray encourages him to position himself aggresively to get good damage, while Demoniac Shockwave has an unreasonably long channel (preventing Antonidas from using his Shadow Bolts during this time) and requires Antonidas to be in danger surrounded by enemies. Death Ray can work into the kit with some support (possibly a replacement E ability), but I’d like to see Demoniac Shockwave replaced with something new. Just a note for options to replace Infernal Bomb, a mobility option could help Antonidas position himself better to spam Shadow Bolts while making Death Ray more intuitive and solidifying its place in the kit. And just a final note, your ability cooldowns for Time Rift and Infernal Bomb are still far too high; I won’t factor that into your score, but you should remember to tone it down in case the next judge does.

On to talents, these also have a few Cohesiveness problems. First, Minions Madness and Lightning Shield require previous talents to be taken to be useful, but don’t have many other options on the tier. Whenever you have a talent like that, you usually expect 3 other options on the same tier that don’t need a prior talent to be useful, instead of 2. Check out Garrosh’s Body Check upgrade talents for reference. Other than railroaded paths like the Shield talents, minion talents, and making missiles shoot faster, the talent tree is very disjointed. Wisedom doesn’t fit into any builds, and the two healing talents don’t have anything supporting them and solidifying a potential support identity for Antonidas.

Moving forward, I’d like to see Infernal Bomb and Demoniac Shockwave replaced with abilities that fit into Antonidas’s playstyle or build on it in a unified direction. Additionally, your talents should have more synergy between each other.

Thematic - 2/5
From a cosmetic perspective, the theme of your base kit is mostly there. Infernal Bomb and Demoniac Shockwave both sound more like Burning Legion abilities than Scourge abilities, which I consider to be a problem. However, as I said earlier, the theme is only there cosmetically; none of your base kit ability functionality implements a Scourge or shadow magic identity, and everything worked just as well being Arcane. Just for reference, Scourge and shadow magic often involves stealing the life of enemies or sapping at their strength, as opposed to just dealing damage. Some new effects in your base kit that use these kinds of mechanics would do a lot to make your theme more than just cosmetic.

The theme is a little better in talents, with the various undead minions fitting into the Scourge playstyle. However, the healing talents do not fit themewise; nothing about Arcane magic or Scourge/shadow magic involves healing allies, so that’s pretty out of place. If you want to push some level of minions, it could be thematic to have Antonidas sacrifice his minions for power, since it represents your character change and fits well in the Scourge theme.

Overall, talents deviate from theme as much as they contribute to it, and the base kit’s theming is purely cosmetic. As a result Thematic score will be fairly low for this week, though I mentioned above several ways you can improve it for next week. That being said, your choice of Scourge-corrupted Antonidas does fit in the contest theme, so that much is solid.

Interaction - 4/5
Antonidas has very few problems from an Interaction standpoint. The Scourge Warrior and Scourge Archer talents are concerning, since it’s very frustrating to deal with lots of minions in a MOBA, and Antonidas can continually refresh them very easily. Though I don’t see any other Interaction problems in your concept, I think this minion spam would be frustrating enough that it warrants a small penalty.

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Hey, Aracaro! I wanted to make sure you didn’t forget that to add any extra fluff to your concept before I judged it. If you’re planning on adding any more, I’ll hold off on my review until its uploaded, with a late penalty applied(As with DarthWalrus’ Week 2). Otherwise, just let me know and I’ll get right onto your review as soon as I can.

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no i am good go ahead !
honestly you guys are doing a nice job reviewing heroes, even if I have to disagree with some of your opinion ^^ but neverminds.
If you guys have SC2 - and are interested in playing the Hero - I could easily publish a test map ! Because honestly it is really an unique and fun Hero to play

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Overall Score

Category Rating
Creativity 1/5
Cohesiveness 2/5
Thematic 1/5
Interaction 4/5
Missing Fluff -5
Overall 3/20

Creativity

1/5

I really don’t have much to say towards the base kit or the talents that hasn’t already been said by Nortin. I will however reiterate a major flaw he pointed out: Having multiple talents that do the exact same thing across multiple tiers is just poor and lazy design.

Cohesiveness

2/5

Similarly to Creativity, I really don’t feel like I can offer anything but another long paragraph reiterating the previous judging, considering nothing has changed. The same problems apply, and I feel similarly about each of them.

Thematic

1/5

Once more, most of my gripes are solidly covered by the previous judging in ways spoken much better than my addled brain can usually convey. However, I’m going to additionally touch on your backstory and the thematic nature of the healing talents:

Frostmourne being used as a source of corruption feels out of line for what it’s known to do. It steals souls, helps Arthas with his necromancy, but it doesn’t really corrupt people(Well, outside of it stealing its wielder’s soul so that the Lich King could command them when it was Ner’zhul being a popsicle). People don’t just get tapped by it and have the worst in them brought out.

Additionally, presuming Frostmourne is responsible for Antonidas’ existence as a Scourge commander, then him simply being able to resist its power outright is farfetched(to my knowledge). Outside of when Ner’zhul was being weakened allowing some of them to break free and become the Forsaken, I don’t recall any displayed scenario in which the will of an Undead individual was ever enough to resist the commanding nature of the Helm of Domination.

On top of that, Antonidas wasn’t really known for being able to heal people, considering Arcane magic wasn’t particularly known for being capable of it, so him just being capable of healing people because he’s unsure of serving the Lich King just makes it even worse; Undead are supposed to be incapable of wielding the Light without immense pain to themselves(Outside of Calia now, I guess), and I sorely doubt the Elements suddenly allowed Antonidas to use them to heal people.

All in all, there’s enough non-Thematic going on in this concept that the only thing keeping this score above a 0 is that there’s effort put into it to match it to the concept theme with the few abilities that feel scourge enough superficially. I definitely recommend putting in work on this concept.

Interaction

4/5

As loathe as I am to say it, as with every category outside of Thematic(and even then a large chunk of Thematic was deferred as well), I can’t really add much else to the table beyond what was already said.

Additional Feedback

Five additional points have been deducted for the lack of any Week 3 Fluff. The story was fluff that was being reviewed this week, yes, but the addition of Skins, Voice Lines, and other such options were additionally part of this week, and the story was something required from the beginning, so I did not count it as fulfilling the requirement for this week.

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Acaraco - 30/100

Scoring note:

  • Receiving +5 points to total score for judge misunderstandings in Week 1
  • Receiving -5 point penalty for not updating concept in Weeks 3 & 4

Creativity: 2/10
Cohesiveness: 3/10
Thematic: 2/10
Interaction: 6/10

(+0 Thoughtfulness, +0 Game Fluidity)