Belial is one of the Lords of Hell from Diablo III, and the one Lord of Hell I think has the coolest thematic. An entire lord dedicated to nothing more than lies and trickery is a cool concept to draw upon, and while his boss battle and story implication sorely lacked any tricky elements, I wanted to make up for that.
In HotS, I wanted to create a mindgames-based support to be a core of a Lord of Hell themed team. I wanted to give him the maximum number of options to keep his enemies guessing, while still being useful outside of pure smoke and mirrors.
Universe: Diablo
Role: Support
Shadows of Deceit
Z (Mount) – 4 Second CD
Increases your movement speed by 30% while mounted.
Explanation: This is a special mount like Kel’thuzad, since he has no lower body.
Obscurity
Trait (Passive)
Enemies cannot see your team’s talent choices. In addition, Belial always looks like he is at full health and mana to enemies.
Explanation: This trait is the most lie-based ability on the character, and has no real benefit. However, by masking his actual health and mana, enemies will never know how much health he has left, or if he is running low on mana.
Devouring Flies
Q (8 sec Cooldown)
Belial sends three swarms of flies in a cone (one on each side and one in the middle). Belial can reactivate the ability to make all of his flies change their course and instead turn into a cone, flying until the converge. Any enemy hit is applied with Flies for 3 seconds, dealing 14 (+4% per level) damage every .25 seconds and slowing their attack speed by 15%. This can stack, and when Fly Swarms collide with an enemy, they are consumed. Each fly swarm on an enemy past the first deals 75% damage.
Explanation: Fly Swarms was a major part of Belial’s fight, and his minions used them as well. I wanted to keep this as his core damage ability, and by far the most straightforward ability. This gives him some disruption and damage, and has a unique targeting scheme that can be quite challenging to master.
False Life
W (10 sec Cooldown)
Belial secretly (enemies cannot see it) grants an allied Hero a 225 (+4% per level) health shield for 2.5 seconds. This can be used again within 1.5 seconds to recast the ability, and it can stack shields, refreshing duration.
Explanation: False Life is his “healing” ability that makes him a support. While it does simply apply a solid shield to an ally, the fact that it is secret and can be spread or stacked as needed creates a guessing game between Belial and his enemies. He needs to guess which allies needs the shields, and whether he wants to protect a single ally or two allies. Enemies then need to guess which he chose.
Desecrate
E (10 sec Cooldown)
Belial denotes an area invisibly which becomes corrupted for 3 seconds. The area prevents healing for all enemies in the area, and, when an enemy casts an ability in the area, it becomes visible and charges up for 1 second before exploding, dealing 300 (+4% per level) damage as well as pacifying them for 1.5 seconds.
Explanation: As opposed to his more straightforward damaging ability of Devouring Flies, I wanted a more hidden area ability that required Belial to toy with the enemy with. The fear of activating it when attacking will always be present. The pacify effect means they cannot use abilities or basic attack.
Mock Meteors
Heroic #1 (10 sec CD)
(Passive) Belial can activate Obscurity to alternate between the first and second meteor being real.
(Active) Belial marks a target location and another target location within 1 second. After another .5 seconds, a meteor hits both locations. Either the first or second meteor will be real, and deals 450 (+4% per level) damage, as well as slowing the enemy by 20% for 2 seconds.
Explanation: The heroic is mainly an homage to his boss fight, with some added disruption for utility. It is a low cooldown heroic, essentially adding another ability to toy with your opponents.
Infinite Faces
Heroic #2 (60 sec Cooldown)
Belial targets an allied or enemy Hero and all nearby allied heroes, as well as himself, appear as the target for 8 seconds. This disguise is not broken by being damaged or by attacking. In addition, every 1 second, a random allied hero affected turns stealthed and becomes untargetable for 1 second.
Explanation: Infinite Faces, as opposed to the much more solid effects of Mock Meteors (damage and slow), attempts to confuse your opponents by making all characters appear as the same person. The enemies will not be able to quickly discern which enemy is which, and so prioritizing and fear will be diminished. A Chromie moving near you may be a Butcher in disguise. The constant stealth and untargetable adds to the chaos as allies can reposition around and stop enemies from guessing based on their cast locations.
Tier 1
• Innocent Guise: Belial copies the guise of a target allied minion or mercenary, instead acts as it would until Belial sustains damage equal to its health. In the meantime, the target appears as Belial, and Belial can move it around as if playing himself, but cannot cast abilities. If the guise is damaged, it returns to its original form and Belial loses control of it.
• Form Swap: Belial channels into an allied Hero for 1 second before changing forms with them for up to 15 seconds, the ally appearing as Belial and Belial appearing as the ally. Using an ability or basic attacking cancels the illusion.
• Fabricate Wounds: Belial chooses a target allied Hero, and blesses them for 30 seconds, causing their health to appear 25% maximum health lower. During the 30 seconds, Belial can reactivate the ability to instead cause the ally to have their health appear 25% of their maximum health higher. Belial can continue to switch by activating the ability while the ally is blessed.
• Obfuscate: Belial denotes a moderate area of the map (perhaps 10 unit radius), and removes map vision of the area for the enemy team. This has two charges, lasts 10 seconds, and has a 30 second cooldown.
Tier 2
• Hellbound Secrets: False Life has an additional effect depending on who the second shield was cast on. If cast on the ally affected by the first shield, the entire shield strength is increased by 75%. If used on an unshielded ally, it can be cast again once more.
• See No Evil: If an enemy hero is hit be all three fly swarms, they are blinded for the full duration and the cooldown of Devouring Flies is reduced by 2 seconds.
• Trickery: Replace your level one talent with another level one talent. Every 3 minutes, this can be changed again.
Tier 3
• Dark Blessing: Allies hit by Descerate’s explosion gain 20% increased damage for 3 seconds.
• Pestilent Insects: Devouring Flies deals 20% increased damage and reduces enemies’s spell power by 10% per stack of Flies.
• Deceit: Replace your level one talent with another level one talent. Every 3 minutes, this can be changed again. If Trickery is learned, this instead reduces the cooldown on switching to 90 seconds.
Tier 4
• Mock Meteors: (Passive) Belial can activate Obscurity to alternate between the first and second meteor being real. (Active) Belial marks a target location and another target location within 1 second. After another .5 seconds, a meteor hits both locations. Either the first or second meteor will be real, and deals large damage, as well as slowing the enemy by 20% for 2 seconds.
• Infinite Faces: Belial targets an allied or enemy Hero and all nearby allied heroes, as well as himself, appear as the target for 8 seconds. This disguise is not broken by being damaged or by attacking. In addition, every 1 second, a random allied hero affected turns stealthed and becomes untargetable for 1 second.
Tier 5
• Feast of the Flies: When Devouring Flies ends on an enemy, it tries to return to the nearest allied hero of Belial, including himself, healing the ally for 50% of the damage dealt. The flies will only fly a length of 6 units before dissipating.
• No Help in Hell: False Life can now be cast on enemies, causing them to absorb the next amount of healing received instead of damage. The effects are still invisible to enemies.
• Falsehood: Replace your level one talent with another level one talent. Every 3 minutes, this can be changed again. If Trickery or Deceit are learned, this instead reduces the cooldown on switching to 90 seconds. If both are learned, this instead reduces the cooldown on switching to 45 seconds.
Tier 6
• Regenerative Falsities: 50% of the damage blocked by False Life is granted to the ally as healing when the shield is broken or expires.
• Marked Earth: Desecrate now lasts 200% longer, and reveals the are while active.
• Veiled Lord: Belial learns a second level one talent he can use with the 2 key. This talent is also able to be switched by Trickery, Deceit, and Falsehood.
Tier 7
• Veiled Assault: Neither meteor from Mock Meteors has an impact marker, and if the fake meteor hits an enemy while the real one did not, its cooldown is reduced by 50%.
• Mimicry: All allies affected by Infinite Faces appear at full health and mana to the enemy team.
• Doppelganger: (Active) Must be used out of combat. Belial marks an allied hero (excluding Belial) for 6 seconds, allowing then to rechoose all of their talent choices. Quest progress on talents that are changed is lost. 120 second cooldown.
• Master of Lies: Belial’s level one talents are empowered. Innocent Guise now allows Belial to cast spells through his guise. Form Swap is now instant with no particle effects, and swaps his and his ally’s position. Fabricate Wounds is now a passive effect that affects all nearby allied Heroes. Obfuscate now gains a third charge and the area is 30% larger.
![:+1:](https://d3rakab8gpdsa3.cloudfront.net/en/heroes/images/emoji/twitter/+1.png?v=6" ":+1:")
![:slight_smile:](https://d3rakab8gpdsa3.cloudfront.net/en/heroes/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
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