Hero Concept: Broll Bearmantle 🐻

[Karabars-2813]

Broll Bearmantle, Champion of the Cenarion Circle

---

He would be The Guardian Druid from WoW in the Nexus.

The base concept is to have a shapeshifter (guardian (bear)) druid from WoW, who can provide mounts for others for some cool plays while also need to focus hard on resource management to get the best out of his no cooldown or mana based abilities.

---

Role: Tank (Melee)

---

Stagform (Z):

Turn into a stag which cannot be dismounted (just like Rehgar's ghostwolf and Medivh's raven form). Heroes who can use horse mounts can channel Broll while in Stagform to mount him. (Similar technique how you can channel on the toytrain.)

---

Bear Form (D):

Basic Attacks generate 5 Rage (max 100). Using abilities consume Rage and turn Broll into a bear for 10 seconds. Basic Abilities and Attacks refresh the duration. While a bear, he gains 100% AA dmg (low in elf form), 500 extra hp (somewhat squishy in elf form) and the durations of CCs are decresed by 25% on him. Can be activated to get max Rage with 60 sec cd.

---

Thrash (Q): 20 rage

Deal 70 dmg and slow nearby enemies for 10% up to 30%.

---

Iron Fur (W): 35 rage

Gain 25 armor for 1.5 seconds and 10% hp worth of shield (can be stacked twice).

---

Growl (E): 50 rage

Taunt nearby enemies for 0.75 sec.

---

Guardian of Ursoc (R1): 100 sec cd

Lasts 10 seconds, decrease the energy costs by 50%.

---

Guardian of Ursol (R2): 100 sec cd

Lasts 6 seconds, increase the effects of your abilities by 100%.

---

Disclaimer: pls don’t nitpick into the numbers. Numbers can be easily tweaked, if that’s the source of an issue, it’s not really an issue.
I’m more curious about what ppl think about the abilities, the mechanics and the overall design.
Plus I know Thrash is a bleed effect, I just thought that since he’s a Tank, that “bleed” could be a slow instead of a dot. It’s a long time since I played WoW and I was mostly a cat, maybe there are better abilities for it, tho I tried to do my research.

So Broll would be this Tank who can just walk the enemy as a stag at 130 speed and then pop into a bear and spam certain abilities which either provide CC for his team or help him keep alive.

Thoughts?

[Cinderella-11778]

The real question is, can I ride Brolll in deer form?
I would not mount on Lunara cause she is simply a b1tch .

The growl looks annoying to deal with,

[Darhide-1157]

You get a like simply for mentioning the name Broll Bearmantle in a positive manner. feral druids so much

So looking at your kit it looks like this version of Broll only has access to bear form abilities. Druids that like to shapeshift typically have access to alternate abilities based on the form they are in, this includes Warcraft 3.

So imo his regular night elf form should do something as well, even if it’s just providing himself extra sustain by way of healing himself with a Rejuvenation or something.

I made a concept too if you are interested in ideas. Broll Bearmantle 🐻- A druid that actually shapeshifts! I gave him Flight Form as a talent at 20

[Reyuna-2645]

Forget the regular elf form, this would make him too much like Greymane (conceptually), scrap the Stag form as well. Broll can either shift into Bear where he has abilities such as stated above, a Growl (taunt), Ironfur (armor) i’d give him a Thrash attack that applies a bleed to all targets hit (aoe) stacks up to 3 times, so you have incentive to stay in the fight for longer. His other form will be his Cat form, where he gains say 20% speed while in combat and will serve as his mount speed when not in combat. You can choose from WoW’s feral abilites, say Shred (stacks 5 times),Ferocious Bite (consumes all stacks of shred for upfront damage) or Rip (consumes all stacks of shred for an increasing DoT damage, dependent on stacks consumed).

I would have the trait simply be the ability to clear roots/slows by shifting forms.

[Shapeshifter-21359]

His kit is like a more interesting version of Varian’s kit but similar in function (slow, shield, taunt). Even if it doesn’t get implemented, hero concepts are one reason why the forums are so fun to check up on regularly.

If there’s any number nitpicking to be done, his heroics probably deserve to be 40-50% lower given they are not that game breaking (but R2+E combo for example provides great lockdown of hypermobiles like Genji or Tracer, or peels for teammates against divers that try to get past Broll).

Would be nice if Thrash could be talented into dealing more and more bleed or DoT the more consecutive times it hit an enemy hero, or even mercs/monsters.

[x0BLIVI0N-2617]

Maybe you could activate the trait to swap from elf to bear?

[Karabars-2813]

@Darhide-1157

Druids that like to shapeshift typically have access to alternate abilities based on the form they are in, this includes Warcraft 3.

So imo his regular night elf form should do something as well, even if it’s just providing himself extra sustain by way of healing himself with a Rejuvenation or something.

Based on what I know from Broll, he focuses on his bear(mantle) form, so I didn’t want to give all forms to him. That’d take potential kits away from other future Heroes and would make it harder to recognise him (silhouette issue). That’s also the reason why he doesn’t really do anything in elf form (we already have a lot of elfs and elf skins in the game, silhouettes might be a problem, after all, Malf has a Broll skin, I tried to make that a non issue).
I think having three forms (one which is not really seen in fights) is a fine line.

@Darhide-1157

I made a concept too if you are interested in ideas. Broll Bearmantle - A druid that actually shapeshifts!

Will check it!

@Darhide-1157

I gave him Flight Form as a talent at 20

No competition! Me only berb! (jk. But seriously, upgrading his mount with a talent would be a neat idea.)

@Reyuna-2645

Forget the regular elf form

His Elf form is just his “chill” form. He has no abilities or real impact that an the moment he uses an ability he transforms. It serves only one purpose: making it clear he’s not a bear but a druid.

@Shapeshifter-21359

Would be nice if Thrash could be talented into dealing more and more bleed or DoT the more consecutive times it hit an enemy hero, or even mercs/monsters.

He can have a Bruiser talent build, just like how Blaze, Arthas and Tyrael does.

@Shapeshifter-21359

his heroics probably deserve to be 40-50% lower given they are not that game breaking

Since I find his base kit strong and both ults provide buffs to his whole kit (without taking talents into consideration), I decided that they shouldn’t be available in every fight ever (60 sec cd), hence the 100 sec, which is 1.5 fight usually.

[Hoku-1399]

If they implement him, give him the voice line “I am Nature’s RAGE!”, and people spam it, I am going to kick a puppy. I am still scarred from that idiotic class hall follower in Legion.

(If I wanted the entire zone pulled, I would have done it myself!)

[Darhide-1157]

@Darhide-1157

@Darhide-1157

I gave him Flight Form as a talent at 20

No competition! Me only berb! (jk. But seriously, upgrading his mount with a talent would be a neat idea.)

Well actually it’s basically Falstad’s or Auriel’s flight abilities but hey that would be neat too.

[Efede-1200]

@Karabars-2813

Heroes who can use horse mounts can channel Broll while in Stagform to mount him. (Similar technique how you can channel on the toytrain.)

I’m not too sure about this, because it treats heroes differently based on the completely arbitrary “can they spread their legs?” parameter.
But I suppose it’s not that big of adeal, if Train mount already does it

@Karabars-2813

His Elf form is just his “chill” form. He has no abilities or real impact that an the moment he uses an ability he transforms.

Maybe he could be given something to do in Elf form through Talents, kinda like current D.Va (she has no baseline abilities in pilot form other than “get back in the mech”).
After all, if Broll runs out of Rage, he’d be forced to just whack people 4 to 10 times in order to change baclk into “can do things” form.

Of course, players would likely prefer Talents that make it easier to generate Rage, but the option could still exist for a “elf build”, maybe?

[Karabars-2813]

@Efede-1200

I’m not too sure about this, because it treats heroes differently based on the completely arbitrary “can they spread their legs?” parameter.
But I suppose it’s not that big of adeal, if Train mount already does it

Well, Malf’s trait has effects only on Heroes who have mana and not other resources, so it wouldn’t be the first which prefer certain Heroes and neglect others.

@Efede-1200

Maybe he could be given something to do in Elf form through Talents, kinda like current D.Va (she has no baseline abilities in pilot form other than “get back in the mech”).

I’m not against the idea, tho his skill should be on how to stay bear, but if it’s not easy for some, it’s good to give him something I guess, a build for low skill lvls or ppl who just want to play yet another elf.

[Xenterex-1540]

as it is right now, it seems kinda bland.

I think an outlet to help spruce out the kit (factoring in talent options) would be to add combo points in addition to rage. Rage already splits his attention between offence and defense, so I think he could use another outlet for his resource control as a way to conditionally reward offense or defense beyond just “spam abilities as long as you have resource”

(get a combo point if Thrash hits multiple targets, or if it reaches max stacks; get a combo point if Iron Fur’s full shield gets broken sort of thing)

Adding a combo system on Growl would allow it to either have more potent effects (to help offset his passive heroic functions) or open up conditions for it to interact with talents. Something like:

Growl at 1 combo point is the taunt as is
Growl at 2 combo points triggers burning rage (aoe dot)
Growl at 3 combo points increases attack speed by x%

[Karabars-2813]

When I created this kit, what I saw was the ability to spam, for quick effects (but imo, that’s rather ineffective because you just burn yourself down), or (and imo that’s the intriguing part) to not spam, but to think beforehand and combo them well, giving it kind of a flow.

But talents could spice things up if this is bland, sure.

Personally, ons talent I’d like to see is making Growl a fear from a Taunt. These kind of tradeoff or bigchange talents are really interesting imo.

[phaseshifter-1283]

[HERO CONCEPT: BROLLY]

[Xenterex-1540]

I agree on that; I think more talents could benefit from options that trade power.

Part of by ‘bland’ I mean it seems like the kit is less of what current heroes do.

In some ways, it’s really similar to misha, but without the multi control aspect of raxxar behind it; or it’s similar to alpha stitches (slam had a ministun then) but without hooks; or it’s similar to anub (shield active) but without the combos.

Sonya shares the Rage spam/not spam, but a decent balance to her kit is not having to split her Rage across more than 2 sources. So the dynamic seems a bit spread thing righ now imo.

[Joat-1701]

Broll Bearmantle (or really any bear druid) is something I’ve wanted to see in HotS for a long time. I started bear tanking in MC back in the original classic WoW and have a huge amount of nostalgia for seeing one back in HotS.

For me, the challenge seems to be respecting both his Nelf form and his Bear form, while not overlapping Malfurion. I’m not sure I’d want him to be just in bear form all the time, which is the easy solution, so I wonder if you almost have to do it a bit like Dva where the mech/bear mode is the primary and occasionally, he’s forced out into the weaker mode and only gets 1-2 buttons to press until he can go back? I don’t know.

As for the pure tanking portion of the program, the rage mechanic can work, as it does with Sonya, but there’s a bit of a cautionary tale there too. She’s dependent on WW to generate rage. Broll would be also, so rage generation has to be balanced so that it doesn’t unnecessarily gimp him in the biggest survival situations. With your disclaimer on the numbers, it’s there more to address mechanics of basic attack is the only source of rage outside of a 60s cd.

I like the idea of thrash, but would like to see it apply a bleed effect like in WoW. Give his basic attack a frontal cleave, and let basic attacks on bleeding targets apply a stacking 10%/20%/30% slow.

I love the idea of iron fur. One of the smartest design decisions they made was to make tanking be about smart use of cds at the right moments. The catch is that shields are devils to balance in HotS, and it may just end up being a generic shield like Anub’s, Blaze’s T1 talent, etc. Broll’s a druid. It should come with a modest self-heal (rejuvenate).

Growl is something I’m struggling with. Every tank should have some form of CC and some way to initiate. The stacking slow is a really soft CC, so I’m ok with giving a more powerful initiate. A charge + taunt would do that, though I suspect 1.5s may be too long, and to gate it behind a huge rage barrier makes it impossible to use as an engage. He doesn’t get an escape with this either, so he becomes a bit like Arthas in the meta, where no one picks him because he’s too easily locked down and destroyed, which means he has to be incredibly tanky on his own to justify it. Lots of shields, big rejuvenate, and still have enough rage to apply some thrash.

I’ve probably rambled enough now that I should stop. Hopefully something in here has been useful feedback =D

[Ironymus-21854]

@Karabars, would he return to his elven form, when running out of Mana? This could give the Hero a neat aspect of Must-Controll the Mana ressources. Without Mana you are nearly helpless.

[Karabars-2813]

If he has no Rage (his “mana”), he’ll return to elf form after 10 seconds, since he can’t refresh ot with abilities.

[anon4932651]

I prefer the idea of making malfurion as you said in the description, and creating cenarius as the current malfurion. He did this regrowth stuff in wc3 anyway.

[PeskyBerry-1727]

I think we need more tanks with taunts. It’s an underused mechanic imo.