[HC] Adria, of Another Path [CDC #12]

Hero and Skin Suggestions
1

This new Adria no longer goes out of her way to kill and torture people and instead uses her unique powers to sustain the lives of those she cares about as well as her team (including diablo I guess : p).

fanfic (y u make me do dis): as Leah grew, Adria began to see the parallels between her and her father whom she hated. Come time for Leah’s possession, Adria instead betrayed diablo and went to seek out her old horadric friend, decard. Using her unholy powers to protect rather then harm in defiance to diablo along with some new horadric armaments. Acting like a double agent of sorts she delayed diablo’s dark ascension and revealed all his plans to the nephalem.

Role: Healer

Health: 2250

Insight

a bit more then uther. Keep in mind that uther also has almost constant armor while adria will not.

range: 5.5 (standard)
AA damage: 65

Life essence

Adria has a special resource instead of mana; Life essence
she can hold up to 500 (scaling with level)
life essence is not restored with health globes, fountain, innervate, or any other form of mana restoration.
life essence does not regenerate over time like mana does.

trait
Blood Witch / Recharge magic item

(range: 8)

Every 300 (this scales) damage a hero takes drops a small pool of blood which slowly move towards Adria when she is near by and revealed.
Adria can collect these pools to restore 1.5% health and life essence.
Blood from Adria her self will not restore health, only life essence.

Recharge magic item
(cooldown: 20)
channel for 3 seconds to restore all charges on your Horadric talents.
see 4 and 13 talents. Recharge dosent appear until taking a 4 talent.

Insight

Adria is going to be in the front lines a lot so she will need a way to stay healthy. This is also a fancy way of making her more powerful in team fights then at other times.
Recharge dosent exist until

Q
Life Transfusion

(cooldown: 4 sec when targeting enemies and no cooldown for allies, range: 5, tether range: 6.5)

Teather your self to a hero.

Being tethered to an ally drains 20% of your current life essence per second and gives it to the tethered ally as healing plus an additional 40 life per second

Being tethered to an enemy deals 48 damage per second and gives Adria life essence equal to 5% of the targets max health per second.
If this tether is broken, the same enemy hero cant be re-tethered for 5 seconds.

only costs life essence when dealing effecting healing and only 1 enemy and 1 ally can be tethered at a time

targeting an already tethered ally will untether them and targeting adria will untether all allies.

Insight and some math

Q is pretty complicated but basically, tethering to the highest HP enemy hero will give you the most life essence per second and the higher your life essence is, the more you heal.

an enemy with 2000 base health (which is a bit higher then average hero health) will grant 100 essence per second. If this is your only source of life essence and you are spending it constantly then the hps is 20+40 at level 1.
The average tank has around 2500 so you get 125 essence per second which becomes 25+40 hps.
these numbers dont seem high but this excluding all other forms of life essence generation.

at max life essence, Life transfusion heals for 100+40 per second but it will be extremely hard to maintain this hps due to life essence draining very quickly.
for comparison, moralas’s heal beam is 172 hps

Counter play wise most tanks have decent mobility while Adria does not, breaking the tether will put it on a cooldown.

W
Blood Barrier

(cooldown: 6)
Adria and the ally she is tethered to gain a 260 point shield for 4 seconds.

every 100 damage (this scales) the shields take, they create a blood pool.

Insight

This is Adria primary tool for staying close to the enemy. A total of 4 blood pools can be obtained from this ability baseline. The shield is not very large but it pairs well with adria’s healing over time.

E
Blood Bolt

(cooldown: 10, range: 5, blood pool pull range: 8)

pull up to 5 pools of blood to adria over 0.5 seconds, then fire up to 5 blood bolts in a shotgun pattern dealing 120 damage. Each additional bolt that hits the same enemy deals 40 damage instead.
If 2 or more blood bolts hit the same enemy then they are slowed by 40% for 1 second.

each blood pool pulled in increases the number of blood bolts fired with a minimum of 1.

you can move during the 0.5 sec cast time.

(the abilities area cone also gets wider with each projectile fired and one of the bolts is always fired directly ahead)

Insight

This works similarly to genji’s Q but with a bit more incentive to use it for aoe rather then single target burst. Adria is going to be doing alot of micro positioning and general movement in a fight so i wanted to avoid interrupting that so you get to move during the cast.The blood pools you spend on this ability are likely to be replaced by the damage this does.

R1
Crimson Nexus

(cooldown 70,range: 6, tether range: 8.5)

Adria gains 20% movement speed and casts life transfusion on all enemy and ally heroes in range for 5 seconds. At the end of the duration, any enemy still tethered takes 150 damage and any ally still tethered is healed for 150.

tethers from life transfusion wont be broken when crimson nexus ends (this just means you wont have to recast them)

Insight

This has the potential for some big numbers, or it could do very little as enemies split up and move in different directions.

R2
Simulacrum

(cooldown: 80)

adria creates a bloody image of her self for 10 seconds that casts altered, untalented, versions of her abilities when she does. Adria’s basic ability cooldowns cooldown 50% faster while the simulacrum is active.

life transfusion: instead heals for 100 per second and can only tether to allies

blood barrier: the simulacrum cant receive a blood barrier. Stacks with adria’s blood barrier

blood bolts: always fires 3 bolts and pulled blood pools are given to adria

the simulacrum has 900 health (similar to water elemental) and can be moved around or told to fallow an ally.

Insight

Simmlar to water elemental. Provides strong single target healing. As opposed to crimson nexus.

talents

Level 1

Blood Spear: the first projectile of blood bolts goes 100% further if this bolt travels at least 50% of its total distance then it slows as if 2 bolts hit and creates a blood pool. (the one that goes straight ahead)

Witches mana cauldron: (activatable, cooldown: 10) place a cauldron that allies can click on to gain 10% of their maximum mana back over 5 seconds. Adria can click the cauldron to get 50 life essence over 5 seconds. Each hero can only use the cauldron once every 60 seconds. The cauldron lasts until a new one is created.

Transfusion weakness: if an enemy hero remains tethered for 3 seconds they grant adria 7 more life essence per second are slowed by 15% as long as they remain tethered.

Level 4

horadric vitality crown: adria heals for 125 when she collects hey own blood pools. Has 8 charges.
All charges can be refreshed by activating your trait.

horadric defending cloak: adria gains 30% armor against the next 2 instances of damage when you use blood barrier. Has 4 charges.
All charges can be refreshed by activating your trait.

horadric blood device: (activatable, no cooldown, channelled)
Adria takes 300 damage a second and creates a blood pool for every 100 damage taken this way. Blood pools cannot be collected while channeling each second spent channeling consumes a charge. has 10 charges
All charges can be refreshed by activating your trait.
Can be channeled for any amount of time.
Cant kill adria.

Level 7

Blood tides: each time blood bolts slows an enemy hero its cooldown is reduced by 1.5. If an enemy is hit by 3 blood bolts then they are slowed for an additional 1 second.

trag’oul’s touch: every 3rd basic attack against a hero creates a blood pool and blood pools burst when picked up, healing allies in a small area for 45.

Potent energies: Life transfusion’s ally tether has 20% more range and heals 15% more when above 60% life essence.

Level 13

Horadric leeching staff: if adria is tethered to an enemy, casting blood barrier puts a curse on the closest tethered enemy for 3 seconds that heals heroes that damage them for 15% of the dramage delt. Has 4 charges.
All charges can be refreshed by activating your trait.

Horadric blood bonds: blood barrier bursts when cast and again when the shield is depleted or times out healing allied heroes in a small area for 70
Has 4 charges
All charges can be refreshed by activating your trait.

Horadric focus crystal: automatically consumes a charge to make life transfusion cost 25% less life essence. (It will still heal for its normal amount. This works like auriel’s glimmer of hope talent at 7) Has 20 charges.
All charges can be refreshed by activating your trait.

Level 16

Blood nova: Blood bolts can now pull any number of blood pools and fire up to 16 bolts. (enough to turn the cone in to a full circle)

Mega drain: basic attacks against enemy heroes adria is terhered to heal adria and the lowest health ally she is tethered to for 150.

Good tides: when blood bolts gives a blood barrier to allies it passes though.

Level 20

Sustained: collecting a blood pool extends the duration of the simulacrum by 2 seconds.

Apotheosis: (requires Crimson Nexus) (activatable, costs 75% of your maximum life essence, has no cooldown, radius 4)
Create a burst of red mist around adria, healing allies hit for 250.
Passive: adria gains 15 life essence per second, per hero she is tethered to (ally and enemy). Additionally, life transfusion can tether to a 2dn ally.

Blood rush:(activatable, range 5, cooldown 45) quickly dash in the target direction. Each enemy adria passes through restores 8% of her life essence.

Soul Stone: !Quest: each time an enemy hero dies near Adria her maximum life essence is increased by 100 and essence generation from any source by 30%.

changes

W and E reworked
Lore reworked
Q slightly altered
New R2
Talents n stuff
New ult for the 3rd time
Lots of talent reworks

skin

Reaper adria
She drains stuff, they drain stuff. Therefore skin.
Adria gets a spooky black robe witha large hood that blacks out her face and has subtle spirits floating around fer all the time. She has a scythe instead of her staff.
Adria’s abilities have spooky ghost effects like malthel but with a more green tint. She floats a bit when she uses chrimson mexus and her simulacrum is a pale greenish ghost.
Trait blood pools are spirits.

Adria of happiness
Robe is bright yellow and green and overall kind of an eye sore
Trait pools are happy flowers
Q tethers are rainbows
W shields are barriers of pure positive energy
E bolts are rays of happy sunshine

CDC#12

1 Like
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Week 1 Judgement

Adria -

Catagory Rating
Creativity 5/5
Cohesiveness 5/5
Thematic 4/5
Interaction 4/5
Overall 18/20

Creativity
5/5
Full points here for taking something out of the Diablo Universe and making it really cool. Using blood to heal makes me smile widely, and it feels like it would be a good use for Adria’s magic if she weren’t using it for evil.

Cohesiveness
5/5
Full points here for making your healer feel and play like a healer. You’ve even considered a way to gather blood pools without wading deep into a teamfight.

Thematic
4/5
You’ve some lost points here. I don’t feel like you really understand Adria’s backstory. She purposefully had Leah for Diablo and their plan to have him possess her at some point. Perhaps if you change it to be like after Leah was born, Adria had a change of heart because she remembered how much she hated her father for being more interested in his ambitions than his own daughter, it would work better. I’m willing to give you a pass on the abilities, even though she still uses blood magic she uses it in a completely different way than she does in canon, however it may not be enough in future weeks. Might be just me Nitpicking at this point but it kinda bugged me. Sorry about the long rant… I kinda get into Diablo Lore.

Interaction
4/5
If I’m understanding this correctly, having a tether system between an ally and an enemy feels like it would be really fun to do and it’s mostly fair to the enemy team due to the re-tether cooldown. I would increase it slightly more to maybe 6-7 seconds so that way some poor tank isn’t always the one getting tethered, especially after they work to break it. Otherwise playing her is going to feel mostly fair, and there are sufficient counters to her to make her feel balanced.

Additional Feedback
Change up your reasoning for why, and make things slightly more fair, and I feel like this could be one of your best concepts to date.

1 Like
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Total Score - 15/20

Preliminary note, your math in the Life Transfusion note is wrong. You say that tethering an enemy and ally gives only 20+40 healing starting from 0 Life Essence, but only 20 of the stored Life Essence is spent; on the next tick, Adria now has 180 Life Essence so healing becomes 36+40, and so on. This won’t factor into judging, just letting you know.

Creativity - 3/5
The idea behind the base kit is decently creative, taking Adria’s blood magic in a new supportive direction. The functionality of Life Essence and Blood Pools feels like an AoE Auriel crown with extra steps, but I think the functionality of it is interesting and engaging enough to justify its existence separately from Auriel. I like Blood Bolt as a semi-risk-and-reward spell that spends potential healing for damage that can return the original healing when used well. Life Transfusion is clearly the core ability of the kit, but its usage is very basic (even if the math gets more interesting) as a point-and-click; I might like to see a skillshot implemented to add more skill to it. Alternatively, Blood Barrier’s functionality could be reworked to be more interesting, as it’s a pretty boring ability despite its utility in the kit. I think the blandness in use between both Life Transfusion and Blood Barrier warrants complaint; if it was one or the other I’d let it slide, but two really bland to use abilities feels like too much. Crimson Nexus is a pretty good heroic and I like it, but Staff of the Leech is much blander and barely works into Adria’s playstyle.

Talents are decent in terms of Creativity. I really like the idea behind Horadric artifact talents, even though quite a few end up being boring in effect. Their recharge effect could also do with being more interesting; a 3 second channel to refill all charges with no other cost or skill requirement is boring and feels like a free refresh after every engagement. I feel like a few more talents are kind of uninspired, with Blood Barrier only having 1 upgrade that doesn’t add numbers to it and multiple Life Transfusion talents granting bonuses for being applied longer instead of spicing up its functionality. I do generally like the Blood Bolt talents, though; they generally reward smarter use of it and let you spiral into more Blood Bolts.

Overall, I think that the base kit and talents both average out to a middling score; I’m inclined to break the tie b/w 2 and 3 points up to a 3 because I appreciate the Life Essence and Blood Pool functionality, as well as the general idea behind Horadric artifacts. Spicing up the usage of at least 1 basic ability, making her second heroic more interesting, and diversifying talents effects are all things I think you should keep in mind for future changes.

Cohesiveness - 3/5
The cohesion in Adria’s base kit is pretty solid. The Life Essence/Blood Pool loop combined with Blood Bolts, then the supportive elements of Life Transfusion and Blood Barrier create a clear and well-supported playstyle of aggressing on your enemies while clinging to your allies to sustain their assault. Crimson Nexus also works well into this, giving Adria a boost to be up in the faces of her enemies as she recharges her teammates. As previously mentioned, though, Staff of the Leech barely works in her kit (due to the arbitrary “Blood Pools generate faster”) and just feels like an out of place heroic; it is easily the worst part of her base kit and I’d advise replacing it or working it into her playstyle better.

Cohesion does start to fall apart in the talents, however. I think there’s a little too much railroading for talents that individually buff Life Transfusion, Blood Barrier, or Blood Bolt. Additionally, some talents just feel like odd ones out that don’t syngergize with any other talents or abilities, such as Horadric Vitality Crown and Horadric Defending Cloak. I’d like to see more inter-talent synergy, like how Blood Spear lets you get CDR from Blood Tides with only one bolt shot, but between different abilities. Some examples could be allowing Blood Bolt to recharge active Blood Barriers, or encouraging Adria to weave in basic attacks by letting her drain extra Life Essence from tethered enemies she basic attacks (which could replace the more boring talents that just grant more Life Essence with time); mixing in these kinds of synergies would really make the talent tree stand out with lots of interesting build options.

Wrapping up, Cohesiveness would be on the high end in the base kit alone with only one concern, but it falls apart more with talents; again, I’m leaning toward a tie b/w 2 and 3 points that I’d break to a 3 just because I think the overall base kit cohesion makes up for it somewhat.

Thematic - 4/5
Adria’s Theme here works into the contest theme pretty well. Reinventing her blood magic to support allies in addition to punishing enemies fits her character shift, and the further addition of Horadric artifacts cements her redemption, though I do wish that the Horadric artifacts had more flavor to them. As far as Adria’s theme to her character, I believe you fall just short of perfect. I remember a big part of Adria’s blood magic involving sacrificing her own blood and creating constructs of it. I’d like to see either of these things represented, possibly in a way for her to sacrifice her health to boost healing instead of just spending other people’s Life Essence. Implementing blood constructs could be more difficult, as it wouldn’t fit well in your kit and would be bad for interaction if she had basic summoned minions that just punch people; however, you could represent this by having her store Blood Essence in a minion that provides minor healing or a buff that she can get back if enemies fail to kill it.

Interaction - 5/5
I think that Life Transfusion is a little too easy to get value out of, as right now it’s a point and click that’s only interruptable with distance. Adding a skillshot as I mentioned under Creativity could fix this, and I might also like to see it being interruped by a Stun or Silence. This is my only real concern and is pretty minor, so I’ll leave this category at full points.

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Overall i agree with most of this.

4 and 13 talents will probably get reworks
W and R2 will to

but Im not sure I entirely agree with your thoughts on Q (or maybe im just not understanding)

I dont think there should be enough counter play to Q for the enemy team to completely shut down sense its her primary healing tool and alot of people complain about alexstraza’s W and people very rarely take the healing passive on kharazim. If an enemy could dodge her Q then her resource bar would really hurt until she had a chance to try again.
Fun wise i dont think Q is that bad. Its kinda like lucio’s reverse amp and people really like that talent with a 70%+ pick rate

her shield on the other hand is sorta meh and will get more interesting talents.
and im not really sure what to do for a new R2

Theme wise Adria was both a mage vendor in D1 and the person who recharged your magic items so thats what the 4 and 13 talents mostly referenced. I do plan on making those talents interact with her kit a bit more but i just thought id point that out.

5

I didn’t have any complaints about the recharge effect thematically, just that it was kind of boring mechanically. And like I said, I really like the theming of Tier 2/Tier 5 talents, it’s just that the specific mechanics you put on them were often kind of basic and bland.

Agreed, though I think that the fact an enemy hit by Q has no recourse but to leave to stop getting hit by 60 damage for second while fueling Adria’s heals even more than normal combat does. Like I said, this concern is really minor and didn’t cost you any points. I don’t have problems with Q landing on allies easily, but it’s kind of rough for enemies to deal with if it lands on them easily and there’s very little counterplay. As for your other concern…

Your Q doesn’t have any cooldown, so it wouldn’t be a big deal for her xD I think that making it a skillshot or adding better ways to interrupt it are both viable options that would just eliminate any possibility for balance concerns, as opposed to the minor concerns I have now.

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err, Q was supposed to have a 4 second cooldown when targeting enemies. if i add that back in how many problems does that solve?

7

I’m not sure if that would change any of the things I said in my review; I didn’t make a big deal out of it since you can only have one ally and one enemy tethered at a time, and 4 seconds is pretty small and I don’t think it would make my suggestion of Q being a skillshot or Q being interruptable with Silences/Stuns less valid.

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hrmmmmm

im not entirely against adding another edge case counter, im just not sure how to do it. if i make it so hard CC removes the enemy tether then her ult gets much weaker.

what if i just lowered the damage a bit?

9

You could just give her ult a special condition where its tethers are unbreakable by CC for its duration; seeing as how the ult already breaks the rule for how many tethers you can have at once, breaking another usual rule of Q to be stronger is fair game. I’m not sure about lowering damage, it’s really tricky to strike a balance for what amount of free, hard-to-avoid damage is fair - that is, not too low to be ignored but not too high to be overpowered.

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Ill lower the damage just a bit and give her an AA damage. the average AA dps for supports is only around 75. I want adria’s damage to be a bit higher then other supports sense her CC isnt really good enough to protect her self with. the range of the tether is about standard AA range so CC already helps you get out of it even if the CC its self dosent stop it.
other then that, i dont think ill do much more to the base ability.

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Overall Score

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

Creativity

5/5

With a solidly creative base kit and talent tree, this Adria concept scores solidly here. I like the usage of certain Blood-themed Necromancer abilities and giving this supportive twist for the character. The Horadric talents are also an interesting idea, and quite a creative talent idea that I don’t think I’ve seen used in any other concepts. In terms of Fluff, the skins are both decently interesting ideas; The Reaper theme accentuates the parallels I mentioned to Necromancers, and the other one takes inspiration(Intentionally or not) from the best and worst Diablo zone ever: Whimsyshire, in a skin I find both amusing and horrifying because of this. The story, however, feels like it lacks some creative oomph to it. I’m not sure what I’d suggest to give it a more interesting take, but it definitely feels like it needs just a bit more to it. (Edit: That being said, as I continue to think about it, I don’t think it’s enough to warrant a point off.)

Cohesiveness

5/5

Both the base kit and the talents work well to sell the intended identity for this character, with synergy spattered throughout and an interesting variety of ways to build Adria. I think my one main concern is just ‘Horadric Blood Device’ not really keeping coherent with the rest of the Horadric talents(Which might be better placed under thematic, but I’m not taking anything off for it, so it’s not the largest concern), feeling a little out of place because of it. Overall though, well done.

Thematic

5/5

Everything works together to give off the right kind of thematic feel, with Adria’s abilities not really changing in origin, but in their usage, with good thematic support from the Horadric talents supporting the idea that Adria is now working with the Horadrim after her change of heart. There is potential for concern with the origin feeling like it would work, but the general idea seems reasonable enough for me to allow full marks here for now.

Interaction

5/5

Interaction in the base kit is fairly solid. Concerns have been raised with Life Transfusion, and while I do agree it could be moderately annoying, I don’t think it does enough against enemy heroes to cause any major interaction concerns. Simulacrum seems more reasonable than most heroic summons, requiring player effort to actually get good usage out of, and not just some generic beefy deal damage summon(Here’s looking at you, Gargantuan.). Otherwise, the rest of the base kit and talents don’t particularly raise any concerns, so I think it’s solid enough.

Additional Feedback

Nothing else to add here.

Edit: After reconsideration, I’ve decided to unmark the lost point for Creativity, as I just keep thinking about it and feel like it’s a little too unjustified to remove it. Congrats on the now 20/20! (^_^’)7

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thanks for the scores c:

im glad my talent reworks worked and that simulacrum wasnt torn to pieces :stuck_out_tongue:

writing fan fiction is not one of my strong suits but I can try to add a bit more.

ill add a charge thing to blood device. shouldn’t change much but i dont see why not : p

Adria has worked with the Horadrim and decard in cannon before but she deserted them to work with diablo. my idea was that adria rejoined with the Horadrim shortly after she decided not to sac leah.

Dont get me wrong, im not trying to complain but I dont entirely understand why this needs more counter play. its hits like a wet noodle and you gotta be in range for a full second to get that 48 damage rather then a quick in and out you could do with an auto attack.

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It just feels a little weird having that single option on the tiers without the charge system, y’know? It goes against the theme of the tiers a bit.

That’s good to know. Diablo is probably the Blizzard universe I’m least familiar with in terms of lore, so. (^_^')

Well, I mean, if you kept in the rest of my comment, you’d see I’d agreed with you on that. (<_<)

But, yeah. Point & Click is always a concern, but I do think with how its set up it’s definitely in a good position to keep it relatively fair, as I said afterwards.

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dont worry, i got that part. im just a bit worried sense every judge has brought it up : s

15

I have also though of Adria concept as well. When can we expect to see Adria?, looking forward to it

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I like your design already, looks good

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Maybe finally we can have a new support hero? Adria Support hero?

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Adria healer hero.
Healer is my favorite role.
i wish some of these would actually make it in to the game tho : s

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waterlong - 92/100

Creativity: 8/10
Cohesiveness: 9/10
Thematic: 9/10
Interaction: 10/10

(+2 Thoughtfulness, +1 Game Fluidity)