[HC] Itherael, Archangel of Fate

Hero and Skin Suggestions
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Itherael is the last member of the Angiris Council to be included, and the only one who is mainly noncombatant. In possession of the Scroll of Fate, his main purpose for the Heavens is to foresee the future and work towards averting disaster. I took ideas from his thematic and the small amount of fighting we saw him do. I designed him mainly to bring a unique gameplay experience that would additionally work well with a full Angiris council team comp, able to provide decent damage as well as offering more support to patch the holes of any lacking defense from Auriel or Tyrael.

In HotS, Ithereal is a unique support hero who focuses on enabling melee allies to get into the fight and stay in the fight, able to foresee enemy attacks and prevent his allies from falling to them.

Universe: Diablo
Role: Support

Summon Mount
Z (Mount) – 4 Second CD
Increases your movement speed by 30% while mounted.

Explanation: There is no need for a special mount on the character.

Talus’ar, Scroll of Fate
Trait (Passive)
Itherael can see enemy ability cooldowns, represented as a small tooltip under their health/resource bar.

Explanation: This trait is quite simple, but it works with his character very effectively, as it allows him a greater ability to defend his team as the enemy gets their abilities of cooldown and his other abilities interact with it. It is also quite potent on its own.

Destined Strike
Q (8 sec Cooldown)
Itherael chooses an enemy and prepares for 1 second before flashing to them (untargetable while flashing), dealing 240 (+4% per level) damage to the enemy and silencing them for 1.25 seconds if an enemy ability came off cooldown within the last 1.5 second. If Ithereal is disabled during this time, he does not perform the attack and the ability goes on cooldown.

Explanation: Destined Strike is borrowed directly from the one instance of fighting we saw him in, within the cinematic short: Wrath. Destined Strike gives Itherael an engage on an enemy with some potential disruption if he can time it correctly. This cements his idea of an aggressive support.

Forewarn
W (10 sec Cooldown)
Itherael has foreseen the path enemies will take and forewarns all allied Heroes within a 1 unit radius within 4 units, causing them to negate the next ability that would hit them within 2 seconds. If an ability was successfully negated, the cooldown of Forewarn is reduced by 30%.

Explanation: Forewarn is a defensive team protection ability much in the same vein of Force of Will from Medivh. Itherael can use Talus’ar, Scroll of Fate to predict when enemies with use their abilities, protecting his team expertly from their attacks.

Inevitable
E (12 sec Cooldown)
Itherael channels for .75 seconds before marking an enemy within 5 units for 3 seconds. For these 3 seconds, whenever an allied Hero would basic attack the enemy within 5 units, they charge to them. This can only happen to an allied Hero once per use.

Explanation: Inevitable is the main supportive ability that Itherael brings to a team, able to work extremely well with a melee-centric team that wants to stay in a fight and close to the enemies. This also makes him a perfect final candidate for a full Archangel team, as three of their members are melee fighters.

Twist of Fate
Heroic #1 (40 sec CD)
Itherael chooses an enemy Hero and marks them for 2.5 seconds. Itherael can then press one of their basic abilities to switch the active cooldown of that ability with the enemy’s associated ability. Once the cooldown is switched, the mark ends. Itherael can swap cooldowns that are not active, instantly refreshing the new ability with no active cooldown.

Explanation: Twist of Fate is a unique disruption effect that gives Itherael direct control over an enemy’s cooldowns, allowing him to manipulate them to offer a better opportunity for his abilities to take effect…

Manifest Destiny
Heroic #2 (80 sec CD)
Itherael infuses an allied Hero for 30 seconds, allowing the ally to pick their talents again, as well as choosing other talents they do not have access to yet. None of these changes take effect, but are saved. Itherael can reactivate the ability to instantly manifest the destiny the ally has chosen for 7 seconds, granting them 40% increased stats and changing all of their talents to the selected one. The ally is also granted all talents they had chosen ahead of their current level. After the 7 seconds, the ally loses all benefits from Manifest Destiny and are reset to the talents they had before they were affected.

Explanation: As opposed to the aggressively disruptive option of Twist of Fate, Manifest Destiny gives Itherael a way to gravely increase an ally’s potency, whether it is making an attack damage character a terror on the battlefield or making a bruiser an unstoppable machine. It also introduces a new opportunity to use the talent prefer system, allowing players to gain full access to a build before they should be able to.

Tier 1 - Gameplay Establishing

• Thinker of the Ages: For one second after an enemy’s ability comes of cooldown, they are marked. Ithereal’s basic attacks and Destined Strike can consume this mark to deal 30% more damage and slow the enemy by 50% for .5 seconds.
• Manipulator of Futures: If an allied hero does not expend their Forewarn charge, they gain 20% increased movement speed and damage for 3 seconds.
• Ensurer of Fates: While Inevitable persists on an enemy Hero, they lose 5 physical armor each time an allied hero leaps to them, stacking up to 3 times for a cumulative 15 reduced armor.

Tier 2 - Utility

• Unavoidable End: When Destined Strike hits an enemy with a shield, Unstoppable, Armor, or Protected, that effect is removed from the enemy for 3 seconds (during which time it expires as normal, if applicable).
• Expanded Picture: Forewarn’s radius is increased by 50%. The next cast has this radius increased by 10% less for each allied Hero hit, but the duration increased by .2 seconds for each allied Hero hit.
• Sudden Strike: For the first 1.5 seconds of Inevitable, any allied Hero that leaps to the enemy gains 20% increased movement speed, and the enemy with Inevitable is dealt 80 (+4% per level) damage.

Tier 3 - Talus’ar Uses

• Reveal Time: Talus’ar, Scroll of Fate can now be activated to reveal all allied cooldowns and enemy cooldowns to both Itherael, as well as all allied heroes. This effect lasts 5 seconds. 60 sec Cooldown.
• Unravel Mistakes: If Itherael is below 10% health, he can activate Talus’ar, Scroll of Fate to vanish from the battlefield for up to 4 seconds. At any point during this time, he can activate it again to reappear at a location within 14 units over a 1 second channel, revealing his end location to enemies. 60 sec Cooldown.
• Malicious Intents: Talus’ar, Scroll of Fate can now be activated to reveal the two closest enemy Heroes for 15 seconds. This has unlimited range. 60 sec Cooldown.

Tier 4 - Heroics

• Twist of Fate: Itherael chooses an enemy Hero and marks them for 2.5 seconds. Itherael can then press one of their basic abilities to switch the active cooldown of that ability with the enemy’s associated ability. Once the cooldown is switched, the mark ends. Itherael can swap cooldowns that are not active, instantly refreshing the new ability with no active cooldown.
• Manipulate Destiny: Itherael infuses an allied Hero for 30 seconds, allowing the ally to pick their talents again, as well as choosing other talents they do not have access to yet. None of these changes take effect, but are saved. Itherael can reactivate the ability to instantly manifest the destiny the ally has chosen for 7 seconds, granting them 40% increased stats and changing all of their talents to the selected one. The ally is also granted all talents they had chosen ahead of their current level. After the 7 seconds, the ally loses all benefits from Manifest Destiny and are reset to the talents they had before they were affected.

Tier 5 - Alternate Identities

• Timely Negligence: When an enemy has not used an ability while it is off cooldown for 4 seconds, it turns gold. (Active) Itherael channels into an enemy Hero within 5.5 units for 1 second. If the channel completes, all of their golden abilities go on a 4 second cooldown. 60 second cooldown.
• Purify Time: Destined Strike now deals 400% increased damage against enemy minions and mercenaries, and if it kills them, the cooldown is refreshed, and the next cast is empowered. If this empowered Destined Strike hits an enemy Hero instead, they are silenced regardless of when their abilities came off cooldown, and are dealt 100% more damage.
• Erase From Observation: Inevitable can now be placed on allies, which causes them to gain 40 Armor for 3 seconds. If they cast a spell or basic attack an enemy, this effect ends. While active, any enemy with less than 2.5 range that basic attacks them will be knocked back to 5.5 units.

Tier 6 - Timing

• Blade of the Coming: Destined Strike resets Itherael’s basic attack timer, and marks the enemy for 3 seconds if it silenced the enemy, causing allied heroes that attack the enemy to gain 30% increased attack speed for 2 seconds.
• Moment of Clarity: Forewarn negates all attacks without consuming its use for the first .5 seconds it is applied to any allied Hero.
• Perfection in Form: Whenever Ithereal silences an enemy with Destined Strike or blocks at least one ability with Forewarn, Itherael gains a stack, which lasts for 12 seconds, stacking up to 4 times. While at exactly 3 stacks, Itherael’s cooldowns refresh 75% faster. If Itherael reaches 4 stacks, he is healed for 200 (+4% per level) and all stacks are reset.

Tier 7 - Storm Tier

• Broker of Time: Twist of Fate has two charges. However, each charge can only be used on its own target type: allied or enemy Heroes. Twist of Fate can now be used on an allied hero, instantly switching any ability of the ally’s that has a longer active cooldown than Itherael’s associated ability cooldown.
• Unmapped Apex: After the effects of Manifest Destiny ends, the affected ally retains 15% of the bonus stats until they die; in addition, any future use of Manifest Destiny on that ally instantly raises all of their stats by 50% for the duration instead of its usual effects. This cannot be selected with Manifest Destiny.
• End of Creation: Whenever an allied Hero dies, all other allied Heroes on the map gain 3 Armor until they respawn. Whenever an enemy Hero dies, all other enemy Heroes on the map deal 3% less damage until they respawn.
• Unwritten Possibilities: Destined Strikes strikes .25 seconds faster, and silences enemies as long as an ability has come of cooldown within the last 3 seconds. Forewarn’s range is doubled, and lasts .5 additional seconds. Your Tier 3 talent now has a 50% reduced cooldown. Talusar, Scroll of Fate’s regular effect is now disabled.

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Now we have five Archangels of the Angiris Council to combat themselves in the Nexus.

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I would love Ithereal, and your ideas are pretty wild.
But would Blizzard really make a hero like this? He seems really meta and more suited for high skill teams, not so much for solo QM.
I think a few of his abilities would need to be simplified. I also would need to see how Twist of Fate and Manifest Destiny actually play out.

Also having an ability that somehow allows you to abuse your knowledge of the cooldowns would make it more interesting. Like say you’re fighting an Artanis and you see his Prism just coming off cd then maybe you could cast a Q on Artanis to teleport on him and silence him while he’s trying to Prism you.
It could work kind of like a counter does in Smash Bros ;D
You cast your Q and if in that time you are hit not with an AA but some kind of ability then you negate the ability and Jump ontop of them silencing and damaging them. That could be kind of neat.
Additionally the Ability has to come from whoever you targeted to activate the teleport. That already seems pretty hard to use but I think it’s playable.
Tho if an Ana is Eye of Horusing you and you teleport on her from across the map, that would be hilarious ;D

So Forwarn is like an AoE Force of Will? Except it doesn’t block AA I’m guessing.
I’m not sure about this one, it seems really strong but also very niche.
How about making it a single target allie spell and if that allie is attacked by an ability while it’s active it teleports the allie ontop of the enemy who cast the ability and silences the enemy for 0.25 seconds or something.
Still kinda niche but you’re giving your allie a fighting chance. Maybe also heal or give armor to the allie a bit with this.

The E is fun. I wanna see this in a game ;D
Especially with ranged characters, if you could combo this with a Valla who then Strafes ontop of the enemy would be golden.

I don’t know what to make of the ults. I feel like they’re too complicated. I’m having trouble imagining how those would even play out or how you’d get your full value out of them.

Awesome creativity. I hope Itherael enters the Nexus sometime soon ^^

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Hey Mocky, thanks for the review! I’ll try to address all of the points you brought up.

I don’t think more complicated heroes are an inherently bad thing, as other games have pulled it off to fan adoration. I tried to take steps to make the character easier to pick up and play, such as the trait, which allows players without as much skill experience to be able to execute their cooldown-dependent ability bonuses.

I don’t think any of his basic abilities are all too complicated. The most complicated one by far is the Q, but it’s less because it actually has a lot of effects (It’s a delayed strike that damages and has a conditional silence), but it is wordy because clarity is often the best policy with hero concepts.

As I noted above, I think an element like this would gravely increase the skill floor for picking up the character, which would make the character feel terrible to pick up for low elo matches or QM. The trait tried to strip the necessity of game knowledge from the play of the character. Otherwise, the effect you described is basically the same as the current Q.

I think a counter could indeed work with necessarily working off of cooldowns. I made a Saurfang concept here that works on the principle of timing and reaction times, similar to a fighting game character. His trait is similar to a counter in a way.

The key difference between Force of Will and Forewarn is that Force of Will blocks all damage for a short time and refunds a heal, while Forewarn only negates the next ability the ally receives (including all CC). In this way, Force of Will can protect an ally from an entire team comboing an ally, while Forewarn is more a spell shield. I feel this affords some of the power budget to making it a condensed AoE that supports his playstyle of shielding a group of melee Heroes during a dive, as well as allowing him to use his knowledge of enemy cooldowns (from his trait) to determine which ability it would be best to negate.

Yeah, they were more fun and unique effects that fit the character and offered new ways to play the game. I hold the philosophy that the ultimates should stand out from other things in the game and be exciting to see, which is what I went for.

Thank you! I’d also love to see him enter the game.

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A very intriguing support concept! f I may ask a few things:
His trait, Talus’ar, what if it becomes like Auriel? Activate to reveal the cooldowns of 1 enemy hero instead? If not than I think a visual change is required, I believe the space between the health-resource bar and the hero is pretty small and the tooltip would have to be pretty small.

Destined Strike, is that like a teleport? I am confused by the use of the word “flashing”

Inevitable is like a gap closer right? Like Rehgar’s wolf attack (charges an enemy)?

Twist of Fate, is that like you choose an enemy hero and then switch, for example, their Q and W? I don’t quite grasp the wording of it, sorry :sweat_smile:.

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For an ultimate idea, since he’s the Arch Age of Fate, he already knows the entire future basically. And he knows the future is unchangeable that’s like his whole character. The way I see his Destined Strike for example is Itherael already saw the future where he struck down his opponent and simply forwarded time to the conclusion of the battle ;D

You could create a whole mechanic with that to instead of silencing people you set their cds to active as if they just used an ability.
Like you create a big aoe circle and all enemies and allies inside it get their abilities set to cd while also dealing the damage their ability would have dealt to all opponents in the circle.
You’d need coordination to get value out of it but it’d be pretty crazy.

Basically imagine you’re a 5 man team in a bush and a single file line of enemy heroes enters the maze. You cast the ult with the circle so that all your allies and 1 or 2 enemies are inside it and all abilities from everyone in the circle just go active and instantly obliterate the 2 opponents while doing survivable damage to your own team.
If you combo that with Forwarn you can make your whole team avoid the damage while you’re at it.
You could call it “So it was Written” or something like that ;D

It would be kinda interesting seeing people get that ult to work mid team fight. Where they desperately try to create a vendiagram with more allies in it than enemies ;D
I’m guessing summons and minions should also count, not just heroes.

It’s hard to translate Itherael’s future knowledge into game mechanics but this might work ;D

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This idea is CRAZY! I love it. I also love the name “So it was Written” very much. However I would also like to point out that that mechanic (this is an ult right?) could make or break his gameplay. I can see future patch notes where the Dev’s may say things like “His kit is un-fun as it requires your allies to worry too much about the perfect positioning” or that his ult is very all or nothing. On top of that, activating all allied or hostile (basic) abilities seems rather complicated. But I’m not against the idea of it lol.

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You could also add to it that abilities that are on cd won’t be affected by the ult. That’s where seeing enemy cds gets really useful again.
Maybe you can add a limiting factor that every ability does the same amount of dmg. So if there’s heroes that have more dmg abilities while others have more cc they don’t get disadvantaged.
Ye this takes a lot of figuring out ;D

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If it becomes a UX issue, I think making it like Auriel could indeed be a good solution to it. I imagine that cooldown icons would be rather small, like combo points for Valeera, with a faded visual to indicate on cooldown, and it being blackened with a bar that slowly descends to show the cooldown. Once it comes off cooldown, I imagine it to have a small bling effect. It would have to be tested.

The flash is basically a fast dash, like Swift Strike, but it makes Itherael untaregtable during it (as noted in the description). It is not instant, but it is very fast. It is basically fluff text to try to explain how it would look.

Exactly like Rehgar’s wolf attack.

I’ll see if I can clarify it a little bit more. Basically, after marking an enemy hero, your next ability cast will swap your Q, W, or E cooldown with their Q, W, or E cooldown, respectively. If your Q is on full cooldown and their Q is off cooldown, you can swap them to disable their Q for a long time while resetting your Q.

I shortened the quote just for space sake, but I think there is some merit to an idea like this. However, I tried to work without the bounds of what we could reasonably expect, and what would be easy to display to both the Itherael and his allies. I went with more straightforward effects overall so that, while he has a very high skillcap, he can be picked up by the average player for at least some effectiveness. I would hope this would also be easier for devs to code into the game if this concept was hypothetically introduced. Thanks for the cool idea, though!

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