This is a redeemed version of Edwin Vancleef for the CDC12 here CDC #12 - An Altered Fate - #14 with how his redemption worked in the Description below, he now fights as the Defias Admiral for the Alliance instead of being the Kingpin terrorist he was before, instead of ruining lives he strives to save them both innocents and ruffians alike.
Week 1 Judgement
Edwin VanCleef
| Catagory | Rating |
|---|---|
| Creativity | 4/5 |
| Cohesiveness | 2/5 |
| Thematic | 2/5 |
| Interaction | 4/5 |
| Overall | 12/20 |
Creativity
4/5
I like the direction you went here with the leader of the Delfias brotherhood. A few abilities feel a bit underwhelming, such as quickdraw and grappling hook, but others such as Bandit Ambush and fire the cannons make me smile.
Cohesiveness
2/5
When I read this, I donât get a âMelee Assassinâ feel from it. If anything, he feels more like a support, debuff master such as that hardcore slow that Quickdraw can inflict, or the various debuffs that pickpocket can dish out (which feels a little weak sometimes especially when used against healers). Not to mention the buffs he gives minnions, and able to turn enemy minions.
Thematic
2/5
Youâve lost points here because while I do like the concept of a redeemed VanCleef, his kit here wouldnât be that much different than if he were introduced normally.
Interaction
4/5
For the most part he feels fair, I just have some minor gripes about Fire The Cannons, as it does not specify range. I am assuming global which would be totally broken on objectives cause you can just perma stop anyone from turning anything in.
Additional Feedback
I HIGHLY recommend that you take more extreme choices with your build to fully match this CDCâs theme otherwise your thematic score may suffer.
Thanks for the feedback mate, the issue with Edwin is that he wasnât truly a bad guy per say and only became bad near the height of the Defias Brotherhood so was hard to turn his story around specially when so much was invested into his week 3 story thing.
Tried to fit his new theme as an Alliance Admiral with his new talent tree while keeping some of the more âRogueâ like aspects in there, some are pretty bland or plain but sometimes it just works i feel 
Total Score - 9/20
Creativity - 3/5
Creativity is kind of weird for the base kit. Defias Admiral starts off with a pretty big oof, being a more basic implementation of a Bribe-esque mechanic with a lane-pushing aura. Fire the Cannons is decent, as an interesting AoE ability unique to HotS. Grappling Hook is more questionable, as it seems less interesting than a generic implementation that would also let Edwin grapple to terrain as well as enemies. The idea behind Pickpocket is interesting, though most of its effects are a little lackluster. Shiv is decent but on the bland side; itâs questionable as a point-and-click nuke but its utilities keep it more interesting. Quick Draw is alright, itâs not the first auto-target damage ability but it has a decent interaction with Fire the Cannons. Bandit Ambush is a marginally more interesting Demonic Invasion, which isnât really a good thing. The Vancleef is a much better heroic, itâs a little similar to Lava Wave but wins out because itâs not pushing focused, not bound to lanes, and has a neat engage element.
The talents are a pretty mixed bag for Creativity. Honour Among Thieves is unique and kind of interesting (despite its questionable utility) and Turn the Tables is a neat and flavorful offensive version of the many anti-crowd control talents. All of the W buff talents are half decent, though with questionable usefulness. Talents like Redemption of the Underbelly and Recruitment Surplus are aggressively boring, and Iâm not a fan of their place in the tree.
Iâm a little unsure of what to score this⌠a couple of your best elements feel like a high end score but are drowned in things that range from average to bad. I think that things would reasonably average out to just average, though. You could definitely do with purging really bland abilities like Defias Admiral and Bandit Ambush and adding more interesting usage to abilities that fall short like Grappling Hook and Quick Draw, As for talents, hopefully having some more interesting abilities to work with in the base kit will lend themselves to more creative talents instead of basic number buffs.
Cohesiveness - 1/5
I donât know what Edwin is here. His kit and talents are having a massive identity crisis between a bursty mage (Fire the Cannons, kind of Quick Draw, The Vancleef), a mobile melee assassin (Grappling Hook, Shiv, The Vancleef), a weird split-pushing summoner (Defias Admiral, Bandit Ambush), and whatever kind of archetype would make use of the varied utility of Pickpocket. Talents just further confuse this identity crisis, with Admirals Rifle allowing Edwin to solidify his ranged mage identity, Boarding Party and Take Your Cut giving him supportive utilities, and a large chunk of talents just making Edwin a better splitpusher. From the ground up, I think you need to hone in on just a few of these identities and make them stronger and better supported through his whole base kit; as is, Edwinâs identity just feels like an absolute mess.
Talent build paths could also use a lot of work. First, while I see what you were going for with one talent option per W ability on three different tiers, you need to flesh those specific tiers out more. Whenever a talent tier has an option that requires a previous talent to be pickable, there are always at least 3 other options that do not; check out Garroshâs Body Check upgrade talents for reference. Second, the only solid build path I see in talents is split-pushing minion master Edwin, and no other sets of talents build out a solid and viable Edwin identity. Some of this could just be trickle-down identity crisis from his base kit, but you should definitely have different build options and more talent synergies in mind when you take another look at your talent tree.
Overall, Edwinâs thorough identity crisis with so many clashing playstyles throughout his base kit and talents leave me feeling like this concept just has next to no cohesion. As I mentioned above, you should really look on cementing a certain playstyle and gameplay identity for your Edwin, as he just has so many disjointed elements right now.
Thematic - 2/5
Thematically, your Edwinâs kit feels far far too close to an unchanged Edwin. Ordering bandits and conscripting minions, using a wide variety of Rogue skills and dirty tricks, and bringing HIS signature warship into battle makes me wonder how this Edwin is supposed to be redeemed into an admiral of the Alliance, as opposed to still being the leader of a group of bandits.
I think that there are couple of things you could do to make your thematic direction much more clear and strong, though. First, instead of sticking to Edwinâs traditional warship, he could command Alliance airships as backup; this fits his history/theme but would never work for a regular Edwin, and is only an option because of his redemption to the Alliance. Second, I would drop a lot of his dirty rogue tricks like Shiv and Pickpocket. Some more supportive elements could also work in his kit since heâs become more of a noble commander. Third, I think you should choose to consolidate him into either a warrior or marksman; having both Fire the Cannons (which I like thematically and would work amazingly with an Alliance airship backup) and Quick Draw on a melee assassin leaves him in an odd place, so he should either lose some of the range to become more of a melee assassin or give up on the melee identity and become a ranged commander.
Interaction - 3/5
As Edwin is now, I see two Interaction problems. First, he has so much split pusher scattered around his various identity fragments, and the split pushing playstyle is one that is generally uninteractive and Blizzard is moving away from. Summons in particular are an unpleasant offshoot of this, since they tend to be kind of uninteractive and frustrating to contend with. Second, your balance numbers are so extremely all over the place; I donât make a big deal out of balance numbers but these are so obscene they build up to a minor penalty. Just some examples: if Fire the Cannons hits somebody just twice, it almost reaches Pyroblatâs damage; several of Pickpocketâs numbers are too small to be worthwhile, especially Edwinâs buff for Pickpocketing a healer; Shiv and Quick Draw just have generally too high damage numbers considering their cooldowns; the ending impact of The Vancleef has a huge burst considering the rest of the abilityâs utility; Honour Among Thieves is probably just useless and unpickable; all of your various healing reductions are too small to be useful (10% is kind of sad); etc.
Rant about numbers aside, I think that these two concerns put Interaction at about an average score. Definitely pay more care to number balancing in future weeks, and hopefully tune the split push/summon playstyle out of Edwinâs kit.
Overall Score
| Category | Rating |
|---|---|
| Creativity | 2/5 |
| Cohesiveness | 1/5 |
| Thematic | 2/5 |
| Interaction | 3/5 |
| Overall | 8/20 |
Creativity
2/5
Thereâs some very hefty variance in creativity here. Fire the Cannons and The VanCleef are two very interesting, creative abilities, and Quick Draw is a type of ability lacking in the game, giving it some creative weight there. On the contrary, Defias Admiral is literally just Bribe + Minion Lord, and Bandit Ambush is 50/50; Itâs a bland summon, but itâs also an ambush themed ability which hasnât really been explored yet. His Level 1 talents share this hefty variance, with Grappling Hook being solid, Shiv being bland, and Pickpocket kind of being 50/50 in the matter, though more like 60/40(Positively). Some of his talents, however, fall more blatantly short of the mark. To name some of the worst offenders: Honor Among Theives(Which I also donât particularly understand the need forâŚ), Redemption of the Underbelly, Recruitment Surplus, Vigorous Training, For the Alliance!, and Second Chance. All of them are just bland effects, with Second Chance being especially bad due to being a generic talent with barely any differentiating effects. A number of his other talents are creative enough, but donât really do much to outweigh the bad, though some of your best talents I would say are: Aim First(An interesting altered effect), Turn the Tables(A unique anti-CC talent), and To Starboard! No, to Port!(A different kind of Heroic upgrade). When you get into Fluff, his Badlands Warlord is an interesting enough skin, and the story has some merit to it, so Iâm not really taking any marks off there.
Cohesiveness
1/5
I really donât think I can offer a more accurate criticism of Cohesion than Nortin already has, as pretty much every established problem seems to remain. Edwin continues to lack a solidified identity or any way to solidify it in talents, and his talent issues with only 2 options on two tiers due to 3 different tiers having a different [W] locked ability also remains. With all of the same issues remaining, I think itâs most fair to retain the same score as well.
Thematic
2/5
As above, Nortin seems to have covered my issues here best, with Edwin feeling more like his normal self than a redeemed Admiral of the Alliance. I do believe, however, that Edwinâs story provides a solid enough reason to give me no cause to drop the points here any further.
Interaction
3/5
For previously covered reasons, the 33-50% of Edwin comprising his Split-Push identity continues to feel rather interactive, with the general uninteractive nature of that build, and the summons from his First heroic were also already covered, also being just bleh and uninteractive. An unaddressed concern with the Split-Push identity is the fact that the Bribe a Minion mechanic of his trait has similar issues to Posession where it grants the enemy team bonus experience, which can be a bad thing to do. Adding on to my concerns, however, are a couple of talents. First, For the Alliance! literally just makes his already uninteractive first heroic even worse by throwing more summons in, and then also makes them permanent to add onto the split-push issue. Cheat Death feels a little bad by still giving some kill XP to the enemy team, even if VanCleef already lives. Iâd change it to have like twice as much cooldown but without that downside.
Additional Feedback
Please actually update the concept this time. I feel like a bad judge for just deferring to a previous judging but with no changes it was hard to say anything that wasnât just a repeat. (.-.)
Heres my less important, non judge, review.
If you want clarification or to go over anything again feel free to message me on discord. Im also willing to make changes/rework together if you like. c :
Not a huge complaint but i think the general readability could be improved by separating the ability effects from the bits of fluff in them.
base kit
Theme wise i feel itâs a bit hit or miss. I like the idea that hes now the captain of an alliance ship but heâs still using alot of underhanded techniques like shivs (which implies that its a make shift knife while an admiral would have access to some real swords), bribing (conscripting is kind mean to), straight up stealing from people with pickpocket, and to a lesser extent, ambushes. If it were up to me, id try and take a more fencing or rifleman approach as opposed to standard rouge. I think trait and shiv (with a rename) can be salvaged. Maybe ambush but i think that would need some kind of new twist to it. However i dont think this is the place to do a pickpocket. (Random idea but what if it was like a counter strike that different things depending on the class. Just keep it simple tho, im not a fan of how wordy pickpocket is). R2 is great, and Q is great tho. C:
E is pretty good aswell but I think the âif the target was hit by Fire the Cannons within 1.25 seconds itâll also slow the target for 75% for 0.5 seconds.â part should be reserved as a talent.
A bit of a tangent but I find it works best to have up to 2 components for each ability or talents with 3 kinda pushing it and 4+ just making it kind of a mess and hard to do talents for. not trying to force this on you, its just one of the techniques I use when making my concepts.
(Random idea in post: for trait, you could get stacks for killing minions and apon reaching some amount of stacks you summon a defias marine to march down the lane and act like a minion and instead of the bribe component he can summon a ships cannon that would act like a catapult.)
In Cohesion/interaction your roles are all wrong. I get more of a hybrid mage/split pusher vibe from this. Q and trait annihilate waves and both ults to help you vs ganks in some way. E has some sustain damage elements, but it also has 2 charges making it bursty (which is fine but i just wanted to point that out).
pickpocket feels like it goes against this game plan as split pushing and camping often isolates you from other heroes. Similarly, grappling hook dosent really mesh with the split push game plan. I feel more like something as assassin would want. Even though thats what it does in WOW, Id make it not require a hero.
With Q im not entirely sure how the aoe on this ability works my best guess is it works like this but in a curve (ascii is hard D: )
E=edwin O = empty space X=aoe zones
OX
OO0X
EOOOX
OO0X
OX
Other than wrong roles and pickpocket tho, the kit its self feels solid and fun to play.
Honestly Iâd just drop the âConsistent Damage and Duelistâ tags and just do split pusher and Escape Artist instead of trying to rework the entire kit to match his current strengths. I also generally find it much easier to make most of a kit first and then make tags to match instead of the other way around.
duelist could be added back in if the fencing thing makes it work but edwin would actually need a reason to be able to beat most other heroes in a 1v1.
talents
kind of a nitpick, but I think it would be best if you stop using the word thief or bandit and call them reformed marines or something. Dont want to subtly give people the wrong idea that they are still bandits.
I think edwin should get shiv as his normal W and have all his level 1 talents be different forms of activatable mobility on the 1 button
at level 4, Honor among Thieves would need to be reworked if trait is reworked.
I like the idea behind Admirals Rifle but i think when combined with the level 1 gimmick it pushes edwin a little to far in the multi class direction.
personally, Id do it like this:
Admirals Rifle: edwin gains 4.5 more basic attack range but edwin attacks at half speed when not in melee range of his target
this way hes not gaining and losing so much
at level 7
Boarding Party feels pretty weak, id up the duration 2 or 3s and the speed by 5%
Retractable Hook: this is gonna be the same for all of these talents but there needs to be a 4th choice so that your not only getting 2 choices if you dont take grapple.
Aim First!: sounds neat but im not entirely sure when you would take this. Its also the only Q talent.
at level 13
Recruitment Surplus would need to be reworked if trait is reworked
Prey on the Unjust is a good talent. It would be cool to have another, earlier talent that let you order nearby minions to attack a specific target if they are in their range (but not chase them).
at level 16
Turn the Tables: 2 things, first, if your getting chain CCâd at 16, your super dead. second I think this would make a good level 1 talent if it gave 30% move speed or so instead of damage.
Vigorous Training: I think this might work better if each ability could only get 1 stack but the stacks did more so that it dosent feel like Q is the only ability that actually gets meaningful stacks.
at level 20
or the Alliance!: sounds a bit weak. I think ti would be neat if this was combined with second chance
Starboard! sounds like fun lol
To me, Second Chance sounds fine to me but id maybe consider tweaking this one a bit. maybe his cooldowns go a % faster for each nearby ally minion or merc.
One final note on ambush, I really like that ability and it might be ok to just leave it as is but im not sure how the judges feel about it specifically. Iâd ask.
Damian - 47/100
Creativity: 6/10
Cohesiveness: 2/10
Thematic: 3/10
Interaction: 6/10
(+0 Thoughtfulness, +1 Game Fluidity)