[HC] Rhonin, the Archmage of the Kirin Tor

Since we have both a Frost and a Fire mage(Jaina, Kael’thas). I wanted to post a concept of an Arcane mage, especially since to my knowledge Arcane is by far the most popular of the three mage specs in WoW. Yes, Li-Ming doesn’t count, she’s a Wizard from Diablo III. My thoughts were Khadgar, Rhonin, Thalyssra and Antonidas. But Khadgar would imo be much better as a skin to Medivh(with voice over), cause he’s a mage and his former apprentice who turns into a crow, Thalyssra would be a potential wasted, since she could be about Arcan’dor, Nightfallen Rebellion, Nightwell etc…So it ultimately came down to Rhonin or Antonidas. I know when you say Rhonin, you think of a Fire mage, but close enough I guess. He’s more well known than Antonidas, Antonidas could work as his skin. I also thought about Malygos/Kalecgos, but they’d need some dragon and ice related abilities, so Rhonin it is. So here goes:

Universe: Warcraft

Role: Ranged Assassin

Strengths:

  1. Exceptional damage dealer;

  2. High burst damage;

Weakness:

  1. Very hard mana management;
  2. Mobility;

Story:
After a short history of the Kirin Tor, explaining the history of Dalaran. Start Rhonin’s story about the Day of the Dragon, his adventures with Krasus, mentioning Ulduar and maybe Theramore, and saying how his adventures led him to the Nexus.

Trait (D):
Arcane Barrage: When casting some abilities, Rhonin gains an Arcane Charge, storing up to four Arcane Charges. For each Arcane Charge, damage of all Rhonin’s abilities is increased, cooldown is reduced, but mana cost is significantly increased. Rhonin can cast Arcane Barrage any time as a single target damage dealing ability. However unlike other abilities it spends all of his Arcane Charges. If cast without any Arcane Charge, it only does a small damage, but it’s damage increases exponentially with every Arcane Charge spent. With talents Rhonin could even further increase bonus damage of each Arcane Charge, could decrease the mana increase, and on high level (16?) could make Arcane Barrage hit two targets.

Basic Abilities:

Arcane Blast (Q): Single target damage. It has long range, but moderate damage at start. However with Arcane Charges, damage is strongly increased. Generates 1 Arcane Charge when cast. With talents, it could increase the range even further, apply a small debuff, or even reveal the enemy.

Arcane Missiles (W): Launches five waves of Arcane Missiles at the enemy over x seconds, dealing damage. Unlike other basic abilities this one serves as a default damage dealer, so it does not generate an Arcane Charge. However it’s damage gets increased, cooldown reduced, mana cost increased with every arcane charge, however increases and decreases are only moderate. With talents you can increase damage further, gain an additional wave, or even at high level be able to channel them while moving.

Arcane Explosion (E): Causes an explosion of magic around Rhonin, dealing AoE damage to all enemies within x yards. Generates 1 Arcane charge when cast. With talents can increase the radius, blind the targets hit, or make the ability spend less mana.

Heroic Abilities:

Supernova (R1): Powerful single target DoT, castable on enemy heroes only. Works like Kale’s Pyroblast, but unlike Pyroblast, Supernova has no casting time and deals DoT instead of an instant damage. Of course grants 1 Arcane Charge, and all Arcane Charge effects apply to this ability. At level 20 talent, Supernova also greatly decreases the target’s movement speed and attack damage. The idea is at level 20, with that talent and all four arcane charges, Supernova costs Rhonin all of his mana, but is basically a death sentence to the enemy hero.

Overpowered (R2): For x seconds Rhonin’s other abilities cost no mana and have no cooldowns. Casting this does not generate an Arcane Charge, however while it is active Rhonin can’t gain nor spend any arcane charges. All of Rhonin’s abilities will deal as much damage as with the amount of arcane charges he had before casting this ability. While Overpowered is active he can cast Arcane Barrage without spending any arcane charges. However after Overpowered expires, Rhonin looses all of his mana. At level 20 talent, after casting Overpowered, his automatically filled with all four Arcane Charges after casting Overpowered, and after it expires he only looses 50% of all of his mana.

P.S other abilities such as Shimmer (giving him a chance to escape) and Evocation (making mana management easier) could be available as talents.

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I was gonna say, we have an Arcane mage. It’s Medivh, Force of will is basically a moded Mana Shield, he polymorphs and the gates are kind of like a blink.
And Arcane blast is basically his Q.

Also, how many people actually know about Rhonin compared to Antonidas? As far as I know Rhonin only shows up in the Books (which are awesome in their own right ;D) but Antonidas is in Hearthstone which is stupidly popular among the plebians over there, so I wouldn’t be too surprised if he’s super popular.

All that being said. You got some nice ideas. By far my favorite is the Overpowered R2. But I gotta be real with you, I will tear this apart a bit. No hard feelings.
I’m not a fan of introducing another burst hero especially one that is this simple to use. We have bursters like Ming, Mephisto, and Jaina but they all use skill shots which makes them hard to use and they’re all super squishy too. Having both the Q and W be point&clix seems bad, design wise. He could just stay way out of range and get the 100% hits with his QW and then do his D. It just seems very low risk and high reward to play this guy.
How is this trait hard to use if you literally get stacks for point and clicking? So every teamfight you just QWE+D and burst someone dead. It seems really boring. Also Arcane Missiles seems really similar to Arcane Barrage.

I like the basic idea of the trait though, we can work with this. I would suggest a bunch of changes. Hear me out ;D
How about his QWE do very insignificant damage while you have no Arcane charges? Your Q and W are too similar. How about we put Arcane Barrage on Q, W becomes a mana shield for some utility, and E will remain Arcane explosion.
Now Q must be a skillshot, it’d be really stupid otherwise, we can have some fun with it tho. How about when you activate Q, you can no longer move but instead start channeling a long range Arcane Barrage. The longer the charge the further the range, and the higher your Arcane Charge the more Magic missiles get summoned towards the target. We can have them scatter a little bit at the end and have talents where they do aoe damage at the target. It will be quite a light show.
You basically get Arcane charges everytime you use a basic ability, but you also spend them everytime you cast a basic ability. So you will constantly have a lot of pressure to hit your targets to get the charges on each attack. Charges used on mana shield will basically make your mana shield more powerful but also make it require more mana. The more you’re attacked the more mana is burned from you. But at the same time, the more you are attacked while wearing mana shield the more charges you get. Arcane explosion… seems really risky to use with this guy, I’m tempted to throw it into the mana shield honestly. We could have an extra effect on arcane explosion so that everytime you cast it you get temp health for every hero you damaged.
You could then have a cool combo where you almost die with your mana shield but then get back at everyone around you with a massive arcane explosion which gives you plenty of temp health to get out of there. And while you’re low HP you still have the option of Arcane Barraging someone from further away with full arcane charge.
We could also add to the trait that the more Arcane Charges you have active on your character the higher your mana regen is. Or Arcane charge have an expiration. If you don’t use them then every 10 seconds Rhonin will consume one charge and convert it to mana for himself.

That’d be my spin on it.

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Nice concept though, but he needs some hero interactions to Jaina, Kael and Li Ming.

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Rhonin is good idea but I can already see a lot of people wanting to have Khadgar or Thalyrass the Nightborne leader as the Arcane Mage.