[HC] Tess, Princess of Gilneas

Hero and Skin Suggestions
1

Tess Greymane, daughter of the very Greymane we have in the game, escaped the worgen curse, but decided to take up the mantle of fighter for her kingdom and all of its inhabitants. While not a worgen, she trained in the rogue arts, and eventually joined the Uncrowned. She has appeared in Hearthstone as a major character for Monster Hunt, in which several of her abilities and talents are themed after.

Tess is a powerful burst assassin, who actively looks for ways to combine her abilities to slay her enemies. While she has short range and lacks defensive options, she can be very mobile, and can provide moderate disruption for her team. In order to burst effectively, she needs to plan out her attack, but she can still provide consistent damage if caught unawares. She flips between melee and ranged attacks, creating a perfect synergy between them. The character’s talent tree allows the player to build their comboes to their liking.

Universe: Warcraft
Role: Ranged Assassin

Important Stat Info

Attack Range: 4.5
Attack Speed: 1.67

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

Explanation: There is no need for a special mount.

Tools of the Trade
Trait (Passive)
(Passive) Tess’s basic attacks change properties depending on her distance from her target; if she is in melee range, she hits them with her knife. If she is out of melee range, she shoots them with her crossbow. After basic attacking an enemy hero three times consecutively with her ranged attack, Exterminate is turned into Shadow’s Touch. After basic attacking an enemy hero three times consecutively with her melee attack, Moonsilver Chain is replaced with Cursebreaker Arrow. This lasts for 2 seconds before the respective ability returns to normal, and the abilities share a cooldown.

(Toggle) Tess prevents herself from basic attacking from range.

Explanation: Tools of the Trade is the core of Tess’s gameplay, forming her range switching nature and embracing her in the theme of dynamically controlling a fight.

Exterminate / Shadow’s Touch
Q (8 sec Cooldown)
(Exterminate) Tess hesitates for .35 seconds before lunging 4.5 units forward, stopping on impact with the first enemy. That enemy is instantly dealt 260 (+4% per level) damage. If Exterminate kills an enemy, any overkill damage is stored in Tess, adding the stored damage to her next use of Exterminate or Shadow’s Touch. Overkill damage caps at 390 (+4% per level) bonus damage.

(Shadow’s Touch) Tess blinks forward 5 units instantly, stopping behind the first enemy in her path. That enemy is dealt 320 (+5% per level) damage and is stunned for .75 seconds. If Shadow’s Touch kills her target, its cooldown and mana cost are refunded.

Explanation: Exterminate and Shadow’s Touch gives Tess her melee gapcloser and grant her large burst damage if she can fulfill their requirements. They each combo baseline off of Tess’s W.

Moonsilver Chains / Cursebreaker Arrow
W (12 sec Cooldown)
(Moonsilver Chains) Tess fires a bolt from her hand crossbow in a 4.5 unit long target direction that impacts the first enemy it hits, dealing 220 (+4% per level) damage and attaching a chain into them. If it hits an enemy, she instantly fires a chain in the opposite direction 2.5 units back, and the enemy is pulled to the other location after a .5 second delay. If the enemy is hit by Exterminate while being pulled, the pull is stopped and the enemy is dealt 150 (+4% per level) bonus damage.

(Cursebreaker Arrow) Tess fires a bolt from her hand crossbow in a 7 unit long target direction, which pierces through all enemies hit, dealing 250 (+4% per level) damage. Any enemy hit is marked with Cursebreaker for 4 seconds, reducing their armor by 10. If an enemy marked with Cursebreaker is hit with Shadow’s Touch, they are dealt 15% of their missing health as bonus damage.

Explanation: Moonsilver Chains and Cursebreaker Arrow gives Tess some ranged poke, and allow her to combo her abilities to burst an enemy. Her Moonsilver Chains specifically gives her some close range disruption, while her Cursebreaker Arrow offers more long range poke.

Night Hunter
E (3 sec Cooldown)
Tess rolls 3.5 units in the target direction. If she passes an enemy, she slows them by 85% for 1 seconds and gains 70% increased attack speed for 2 seconds, increasing the cooldown by 5 seconds. If she hits a wall, she vaults off it after .25 seconds, landing 4 units towards the player’s cursor, firing a ranged basic attack to all enemies in 6 range, dealing 200 (+4% per level) damage, increasing the cooldown by 11 seconds, and slowing them by 40% for 2 seconds. If at least three enemy heroes were hit, Exterminate is transformed into Shadow’s Touch for 2 seconds.

Explanation: Night Hunter gives Tess some mobility to compliment her in the fight nature, and give her options to combo her abilities depending on the situation.

Blessing of the Wolf
Heroic #1 (—)
(Passive) Every time Tess lands three consecutive basic attacks on an enemy hero, or kills an enemy, she can use this ability within 2 seconds.
(Active) Tess instantly resets the cooldown of an the first ability used within the last 2 seconds, and instantly heals herself by 100 (+4% per level). Every ability cannot be refreshed by this once every 12 seconds, with each having its own individual refresh cooldown.

Explanation: Similar to an inverse Might of the Nerazim, Blessing of the Wold allows Tess to combo more consistently, and depending on usage and clever ordering of her burst, she can perform multiple different comboes with her talents.

Blood Moon
Heroic #2 (60 sec Cooldown)
(First Activation) Tess slashes with her knife in a 1 unit long, 180 degree cone, dealing 125 (+4% per level) damage to all enemies hit and slowing them by 35% for 1 second. Tess can reactivate Blood Moon within 2 seconds.
(Second Activation) Tess fires a spray of bolts in a 4.5 unit long, 80 degree wide cone, dealing 125 (+4% per level) damage to all enemies hit, blinding them for 1 second. Tess can reactivate Blood Moon within 2 seconds.
(Third Activation) Tess lines up a shot in a 12 unit long, thin skillshot over .5 seconds, and then fires it quickly, dealing 125 (+4% per level) damage to the first enemy hit, as well as 15% of their missing health in damage.

Explanation: Blood Moon simply gives Tess a powerful staged damage tool, that can be used in a burst to decimate an enemy, or used over a short time dynamically as the fight unfolds.

Tier 1

• Night Feast: If Night Hunter rolls past an enemy hit by Shadow’s Touch within the last .5 seconds, the stun is ended and Tess gains a shield equal to 15% of her maximum health for 3 seconds.
• Bloodied Bolt: Cursebreaker Arrow can now benefit from Exterminate’s stored damage.
• Kidnapping: Within .5 seconds of impacting an enemy with Exterminate, Tess can use Moonsilver Chains to pull her and her impacted enemy to the end location.

Tier 2

• Haunting Shadow: Moonsilver Chains now applies Cursebreaker to enemies, and if an enemy is hit by Shadow’s Touch while being pulled, Tess is pulled along with the enemy.
• Clawing Darkness: If Cursebreaker Arrow hits an enemy stunned by Shadow’s Touch, they are knocked back to the end of the line.
• Shackled Prey: If Tess rolls past an enemy being pulled by Moonsilver Arrow with Night Hunter, they are rooted after they reach the end location for 1 second.

Tier 3

• Hunter’s Insight: If an enemy hero is hit with Moonsilver Chains or Cursebreaker Arrow, the cooldown of Night Hunter is refreshed.
• Shadow Dance: If an enemy Hero is stunned by Shadow’s Touch, Night Hunter’s cooldown is refreshed.
• Quickened Pace: Every time one of Tess’s basic abilities is upgraded from any means, Night Hunter’s cooldown is reduced by 50%.

Tier 4

• Blessing of the Wolf: (Passive) Every time Tess lands three consecutive basic attacks on an enemy hero, or kills an enemy, she can use this ability within 2 seconds. (Active) Tess instantly resets the cooldown of an the first ability used within the last 2 seconds, and instantly heals herself by 100 (+4% per level). Every ability cannot be refreshed by this once every 12 seconds, with each having its own individual refresh cooldown.
• Blood Moon: (First Activation) Tess slashes with her knife in a 1 unit long, 180 degree cone, dealing 125 (+4% per level) damage to all enemies hit and slowing them by 35% for 1 second. Tess can reactivate Blood Moon within 2 seconds. (Second Activation) Tess fires a spray of bolts in a 4.5 unit long, 80 degree wide cone, dealing 125 (+4% per level) damage to all enemies hit, blinding them for 1 second. Tess can reactivate Blood Moon within 2 seconds. (Third Activation) Tess lines up a shot in a 12 unit long, thin skillshot over .5 seconds, and then fires it quickly, dealing 125 (+4% per level) damage to the first enemy hit, as well as 15% of their missing health in damage.

Tier 5

• Moonlight Huntress: Tess can use Moonsilver Chains while vaulting from Night Hunter, attaching chains to each enemy hit by Night Hunter, and attaching the secondary chain to the terrain location she vaulted off of.
• Reaping: Tess can use Shadow’s Touch while vaulting from Night Hunter, blinking among all three enemies hit, dealing half damage and stunning them for half the duration.
• Falling Comet: Tess can use Exterminate while vaulting from Night Hunter. If she lands on an enemy, they are instantly dealt Exterminate’s damage, plus an additional 168 (+4% per level) damage.

Tier 6

• Hunter of Old: If Tess has damage stored from Exterminate, and she vaults of terrain with Night Hunter, all enemies hit are dealt 25% of the stored damage, and have their armor reduced by 15 for 3 seconds.
• New Moon: Within 1 second of stunning an enemy with Shadow’s Touch, using Moonsilver Chains deals 25% increased damage to the enemy and binds them in chains, preventing the enemy from basic attacking for 2 seconds.
• Twilight Shroud: If Tess rolls through an enemy afflicted by Cursebreaker with Night Hunter, the cooldown of Night Hunter is reduced to 2 seconds, Cursebreaker is consumed to deal bonus damage, and Tess enters stealth for .75 seconds.

Tier 7

• Cultist’s Boon: Can only be selected if Blessing of the Wolf was chosen. Exterminate, Shadow’s Touch, Moonsilver Chains, and Cursebreaker Arrow all have separate cooldowns now.
• Mounting Moonshed: Every time Blood Moon hits an enemy Hero, future activation effects deals 10% increased damage. If an enemy Hero was hit with each activation, the cooldown is decreased by 30%.
• Expert Strategist: Tess may select two additional talents from any tier besides Tier 4 or Tier 7. These talents can be from the same tier, or from separate tiers.
• Keep the Momentum: (Active) Tess instantly upgrades both Exterimate and Moonsilver Chains, and refreshes all of her basic cooldowns. This can only be used within 3 seconds of a Takedown. 15 sec Cooldown.

2 Likes
2

This concept is really cool and well put together! I generally like higher skill cap assassins and abilities that combo together in interesting ways, and Tess provides both in spades. Also, giving different uses to melee and ranged basic attacks in one character is used in an interesting way here. Makes me think of my Zelkyr concept, but here there’s a reason to use ranged basic attacks besides safety, since neither is objectively better than the other.

I really like Exterminate’s overkill effect, since it adds extra decision making and potential value to what is otherwise a pretty basic dash and damage ability. There is a pathological case where Tess can stack overkill up more and more on minions to 1-shot an enemy hero eventually (I assume that any stored overkill that then overkills is stored again), but there’s probably a reasonable cap implied to how much Tess can stack it. Shadow’s Touch is a nice upgrade/side-grade to Exterminate, and the easier use, higher mobility, extra damage, and stun will make it feel worthwhile to build up to instead of using Exterminate. I think that the difference of on-kill effect makes it so that Shadow’s Touch isn’t always preferable to Exterminate, and the talents accentuate that; I like that aspect of how the player might need to stop and think about whether they want to upgrade Exterminate before using it or not.

For Moonsilver Chains, again it’s a cool ability with multiple angles to it. I think that the pull effect is really strong, and provides Tess with some huge disruption and kill potential. The Exterminate combo effect is also nice; it’s really good for when you need the damage or don’t want to pull the target all the way back, but you need to think twice about using it if you do want the full pull distance (unless you took a certain talent). Cursebreaker Arrow as an upgrade has an interesting tradeoff of disruption vs damage, which again is a neat effect making players think about whether they want to use Moonsilver Chains before or after upgrading it. I’m not sure, but the armor reduction duration might be a bit much; the extra burst with Shadow’s Touch looks mostly fine to me though.

Night Hunter is (again) a well-built ability with multiple effects, offering different tradeoffs. All 3 effects have their own situations in which you’d want to use them, and I think that the latter 2 effects are really important and have a good place in the kit. Without them, I’m not sure it’d be reasonable for Tess to ever land a Cursebreaker Arrow into Shadow’s Touch (or other way around with some talents) based on the tight time frames, but both the attack speed boost and the area of effect basic attack make it feasible to do.

As for heroics, Blessing of the Wolf feels like it might be really overtuned. With Tess’s time between basic attacks, I think it can lead to her spamming just about any basic ability on a 2-second cooldown which strips a lot of the skill from her kit and looks really oppressive. Orphea has a similar mechanic with Shadow Waltz, but it does less damage than any of Tess’s abilities and requires her to hit a delayed skillshot instead of just basic attack 3 times. I think that giving each basic ability an internal cooldown on how often it can be reset, but otherwise leaving Blessing of the Wolf unchanged would prevent this exploit while maintaining the intended purpose of allowing high skill players to perform multiple combos. (Also, you mis-typed it as Blessing of the Wold in your explanation bit; somehow I did the same thing once every time I typed the ability’s name here :P)

Blood Moon looks mostly fine, providing delayed damage over multiple casts with some extra effects. I think that the total damage plus bonus effects is a bit much, at least with the ability’s current cooldown; that being said it feels much more balanced than Blessing of the Wolf.

Overall, the base kit is really well put together, with all basic abilities having multiple angles, important decision making, a couple base combos, and some high-skill short time frames to do everything in. I feel like there’s a lot of damage in the Q and W together, but it should be fine; the heroics both push this in some way or another and I think both should be re-tuned.

On to talents, I think they’re put together very interestingly. None of the talents affects just a single ability, so all create new combos or enhance existing ones within the kit. I think there’s a good combinations of themed tiers (Tier 2 providing extra control on enemies, Tier 3 providing a choice of how to get more uses of Night Hunter, Tier 5 adding an extra Night Hunter Vault combo) and more general tiers that allow players to diversify their build (Tiers 1, 6, 7). They really solidify Tess’s identity as a high skill cap combo character, with lots of different paths to take.

However, Tess generally lacks talents that help her survive in some way; besides some conditional mobility buffs, not much is stopping Tess from just dying in a teamfight as a consequence of bouncing into melee range and trying to combo abilities. I also see that she has loads of power in combo-ing down enemies in a 1v1 situation (I think a good Tess would be unbeatable here, except maybe by Valeera cheese). For example, I was looking at creating a build around Shadow’s Touch and Moonsilver Chains with Night Terror, Haunting Shadow, Shadow Dance, Blessing of the Wolf, (not sure about Tier 5), New Moon, and Keep the Momentum. There are multiple ways that Shadow’s Touch, Night Hunter, and Moonsilver Chains can combo to disable Tess’s opponent for a long time between stuns and fears and basic attack disables while outputting severe damage. I think that Tess would struggle in teamfights and completely dominate in 1v1 scenarios, which runs counter to the way the game is now. I might consider rebalancing some of the crowd control and cooldown resets present throughout her kit to some defensive options to tune her more toward that, but I think that if you want Tess’s playstyle to work as is then it doesn’t need to be changed.

Just some comments on specific talents, I think that Expert Strategist is an interesting idea and works especially well with how Tess’s talents are combo based instead of flat bonuses. I’m not sure about Keep the Momentum as a strictly more powerful version of Rewind, with Rewind already being one of the best level 20 talents on any hero that can pick it. It might be fine considering how Zeratul is with his level 20 Might of the Nerazim talent, but I’d take another look at making sure it’s fair, especially since Tess has far more crowd control available to her than Zeratul.

3

This is a really cool concept, but her kit has way too many features. Complexity is good, but baking in extra effects and bonuses in an ability is just unnecessary cluttering. The fact that she has 2 Q and 2 W abilities that each have special interactions with eachother and an E with several different outcomes. All baseline.

You should really trim off all this unnecessary complication to make the character better. For instance, Alarak and Kel’thuzad have very deep and complex kits, but their abilities are simple on their own.

Imagine if KTZ’s chains said “Launch a chain, dealing 97 (+2.5% per level) damage to the first enemy Hero hit. For 3 seconds after hitting an enemy, Chains of Kel’Thuzad can be reactivated to launch to an additional enemy, pulling both enemies together and Stunning them for 0.5 seconds. Launching a chain from and hero to Kel’thuzad pulls them to him and causing Kel’thuzad to release burst of frost, dealing 219 (4%) damage to nearby enemies. If a chain hits a wall, it shatters, dealing 123 (4%) damage to nearby enemies. Frost Nova explodes instantly if hit by a shattered chain and deals 150 (4%) bonus damage.”

My suggestion is, making her retain her trait of “having a tool for every situation”, but baking her tool-set into her talents and letting her abilities be simple abilities with some bonus effect that can be altered through talents or replaced to fit something else.

4

I’m sorry it took me so long to get around to updating this concept. Thank you for the wonderful review.

I’m not sure what to do with Exterminate; I didn’t initially plan for the Extermate damage to continue to build, and only wanted to reward last hitting with it to make its use more engaging.

I think you are right on me overdoing the CC and not including enough ways for Tess to survive. I will look to reducing her overall CC and focus more on some self-preservation for her. I also will nerf both of her heroics; I was already unsure about whether or not Blessing of the Wolf was going to be OP.

I did miss over how Keep the Momentum is really just a broken version of Rewind. I have an idea on how to fix it, and would like to know if this works out better.

As for Labreris, I understand why you are cautious about introducing a more complex character, but I think the game can benefit from a mix of styles. The character is made to be one of the more complex combo characters in the game. I think many of the abilities would be very simple and boring without their effects. For example, Exterminate would just be a dash and damage without the damage storing effect. I also think it is unfair to include her secondary abilities of Shadow’s Touch and Cursebreaker Arrow in her core abilities; that is like saying Ragnaros is complex because his trait changes his abilities.