[HR] Kael'thas - Rework - CDC #10

Hero and Skin Suggestions
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Kael’thas
The Sun King
Role: Ranged assasin
Universe: Warcraft

Kael’thas in his current form is decent representation of himself and has ok winrate.
However his main problem is that he is very often picked/banned in lower leagues while being percieved as weaker mage in higher league.
I will try to adress that as well as some “unfun” mechanics in this rework.

Verdant Spheres (D)
Cooldown: 6 seconds

Activate to make your next Basic Ability more powerful.

Active part of his trait remains the same.

Mana Addict (Baseline quest)

Quest: Gathering a Regeneration Globe increases your maximum Mana by 10.
Reward: After gathering 30 Regeneration Globes, you can also activate Arcane Barrier to gain a Shield equal to 100% of your maximum Mana for 4 seconds. 45 second cooldown.

I decided to make a weaker version of Mana addict baseline as this talent was pretty much must pick when playing Kael’thas in higher level games.

Flamestrike (Q)
Mana: 70
Cooldown: 7 seconds

After 1 second, deal 250 (+4% per level) damage in an area and set it on fire dealing 40 damage per second for 3 seconds.
Verdant Spheres increases the radius by 50%.

This change is aimed at pushing Kael’thas more in the zonning role instead of a plain damage mage.
The burst damage is weaker while the overall damage is higher rewarding well placed Flamestrikes.

Pyroblast (W)
Mana: 80
Cooldown: 10 seconds

Activate to conjure a fireball that deals 320 damage to all enemies in its path. Pyroblast’s damage increases the longer it is Channeled (50 per second and maximum 200). Reactivate to fire.
Kael’thas can move at 80% movement speed while channeling at channel indefinitely.
Verdant Spheres doubles the charge up damage per second.
Pyroblast’s range and movementspeed is similar to Li-Ming’s Orb.

Both Living bomb and Pyroblast has been complained about because of their Point-and-click nature, high damage and trolling potential.
I don’t think that Living bomb mechanic is very good so instead of trying to salvage it I simply replaced it with reworked version of Pyroblast.

Gravity lapse (E)
Mana: 90
Cooldown: 14 seconds

Stun the first enemy hit for 1 seconds.
Verdant Spheres causes Gravity Lapse to stun the first 3 enemies hit and increases the stun duration by 50%.

Unchanged

Phoenix (R1)
Mana: 80
Cooldown: 60 seconds

Launch a Phoenix to an area, dealing 78 (+4% per level) damage to enemies along the way. The Phoenix persists for 7 seconds, attacking enemies for 78 (+4% per level) damage and splashing for 50%.

Don’t fix what ain’t broken

Siphon magic (R2)
Mana: Free
Cooldown: 40 seconds

Fires a medium range skillshot in the targeted direction. If it hits enemy hero, Kael’thas drain their magic over 3 seconds. Decreases target’s spell power by 15, increases Kael’thas’s spell power by 15 and recharges 10% of his maximum mana per second.

New ult that gives Kael’thas utility and option to boost his power at the beginning of fight.

Talents
Level 1
Convection: Quest: When Flamestrike damages an enemy Hero, increase its damage by 5, up to 100. Lose 5 stacks if you die.
Reward: After gaining 100 bonus damage, increase Flamestrike damage by an additional 50.

Fel Infusion: Heal for 10% of you maximum health when you activate Verdant Spheres and increase the spellpower of you next basic ability by 8%.

Thirst for magic: Increase the mana regen from regen globes by 50% and reduce the Mana Addict requirement to 15 regen globes.

Cloak of flames: Taking more than 20% of his maximum health in damage within 2 seconds grants Kael’thas 30 armor and cause him to deal 50 damage per second to enemies around him for 4 seconds. 30 seconds cooldown.

Changes to Covection should make it a little more stable bonus while also limiting Flamestike burst damage.
New Fel Infusion should better work with KT’s playstyle of empowering specific ability
Thirst for Magic makes it easier to complete the quest thus making KT harder to dive.
Cloak of flames is more anti-burst tool that can also help with dive.

Level 4
Consuming Flame: Flamestrike over time damage slows enemies in the area by 15% and generate 1 mana every time it hits an enemy.

Nether Wind: Increases Gravity Lapse’s range by 30%. When Gravity Lapse hits an enemy Hero, refund 40 Mana and reduce its cooldown by 5 seconds.

Mana Tap: Activating Verdant Spheres restores 5% of your maximum Mana.

New talent Consuming Flame that empowers Flamestrike’s zoning potential while also giving mana sustain.
Nether wind now also shares some of the function of Energy roll as both of those talents do something very similar
Mana Tap unchanged as it will synergize well with baseline quest.

Level 7
Burned Flesh: When Flamestrike’s explosion damages 2 or more Heroes, they take additional damage equal to 4% of their maximum Health and Flamestrike’s DoT deals additional 1% of targets maximum health every second.

Reign of fire: Pyroblast (W) sets the ground in its path on fire dealing half of its damage over 4 seconds

Sunfire Enchantment: Gain 1 autoattack range. Activating Verdant Spheres causes your next 2 Basic Attacks to instead deal 115 (+4% per level) Spell Damage and give 5% Spell Power for 10 seconds.

Burned Flesh updated with current version of Flamestrike.
Reign of fire provides addtional zonning and damage to Pyroblast.
Sunfire Enchantment buffed to better compete.

Level 10
Phoenix (R1): Heroic ability (Description in abilities section)

Siphon magic (R2): Heroic ability (Description in abilities section)

Level 13
Pyromaniac: Dealing spell damage to enemies reduce Kael’thas’s ability cooldowns by 0.25 second.

Motion sickness: Gravity Lapse (E) applies 50% slow that fades over 2 seconds.

Arcane shockwave: Arcane barrier deals 40% of its shield as damage to nearby enemies and slow them by 20% for 2 seconds.

This tier was originaly reserved for Living bomb talents so I switched it to defensive/utility options.

Level 16
Fury of the Sunwell: Flamestrike will explode a second time 1.5 seconds later.

Force of mind: Pyroblast can be channeled 2 seconds longer for increased damage. Fully channeling Pyroblast (E) reduces its cooldown by 2 seconds.

Twin Spheres: Verdant Spheres gains a second charge.

Ignite: Verdant Spheres empowered ability applies Living Bomb to first enemy hero hit (closest to center for Flamestrike).
Living bomb stats: Deal 120 (+4% per level) damage over 3 seconds to an enemy, then they explode dealing 200 (+4% per level) damage to all nearby enemies. Other Heroes damaged by this explosion are also affected by Living Bomb, though the secondary explosions cannot spread.

Fury of the Sunwell and Twin Spheres remains unchanged as both should work well with other (new and old) talents.
Force of mind is new Pyroblast talent that should offer some interesting options.
Ignite now works with any ability while maintaing the theme of empowering specific spell.

Level 20
Rebirth: Increases Phoenix duration by 100%. While alive, the Phoenix may be ordered to move to a different location.

Arcane leech: Increase the range of Siphon magic (R2) and hitting hero also activates Verdant Spheres.

Flamethrower: Increases the cast range of Flamestrike by 40%. If you hit 2 or more Heroes with Flamestrike’s explosion, Flamestrike’s cooldown is reduced by 4 seconds.

Master of Flames: Pyroblast can be redirected once while flying.

Rebirth remains the same.
Arcane Leech upgrade for the new ult with Verdant Spheres talents synergy.
Flamethrower reworded slightly (works the same).
And new talent for new Pyroblast to allow more playmaking.

There are 3 builds (Flamestrike, Pyroblast and Verdant Spheres) while some tiers remain situational (picking build shouldn’t dictate all the talents).

Skins:
Blood-king Kael’thas - San’layn skin with more vampire-like look and altered voicelines.

Priest of Ka Kaelthas - Ancient Egypt like skin with more sun (rather than fire) themed abilities.

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im both happy and a tiny bit sad to see bomb go but i think getting rid of it was the right call

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I just don’t know how to make it less annoying. Even making it a skillshot wouldn’t solve the main problem of depending on teammates positioning :frowning_face:

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yeah, the spreading mechanic alwase felt like your own team was killing you instead of kael

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also dont forget to link your rework in the CDC post

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Thank you

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Which ranks are we talking here?
Up in the master ranks he is frequently picked, and i myself rarely end up taking Mana Barrier, the only cases where i take Mana Barrier is when i first pick KT and they get some heavy backline pressure comp, other than that i adapt and adjust according to map and comp with what i build around.

imo FS and Living bomb build is quite stable, atleast in my own KT games.
Pyro is a deadly target ability but so easily countered aswell, Phoenix is more of a last resort/Zoning ability for objectives.
Don`t see a reason for change at this moment.

-Ngin

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This is based on mix of HotSLogs data and forum users discussion (Mana addict has cca 80% popularity in Master + Diamond (I know HotSlogs isn’t accurate but it is the best we can get)). I personaly can’t speak for either high or low levels but the amount of nerf/rework/remove KT threads is significant.

Pyro is very strong when uncoutered (QM) but a significantly weaker when enemy knows how to react.

Also this concept is part of CDC#10 and the goal there is to rework a hero. I chose KT because I like him and his rework has been demanded for a long time. This way I can at least try to keep him fun for me (and hopefully others).

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Well it is a good argument based on stats.
Personaly (This is ofc personated and non stats related) i feel that he is in an ok place at the moment.
Usually rarely a threat when picked early, but a huge threat when last picked into decent comps.

But yes i can see that being a problem.
I do also remember KT back when he got released, and living bomb did spread eternaly without the lvl 20 talents, and it also spread between buildings, tons of fun, broken as hell.

I have to say though, as i saw those mana addict stats aswell, and i know i see ALOT of KTs building into it, i rarely see them actually needing it.
And ALOT, and i say ALOT of people are building based off of others, not understanding talents and how to build.
There are few heroes i can think of that can run the same build every game.
my Main Valla unfortunatly has a very stale building path, and usually when buildt into Hungering, Multishot or AA are rarely any change in the talents.

But again i see the point you are making, though nerfing and buffings heroes for QM seems kinda braindead to me.

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As KT player myself I have two questions:
Do you pick Convection or Fel Infusion?
How effective do you thing Living bomb is (how often it spreads to other heroes)?

I personaly pick Mana Addict if I think enemy team can dive me often + it gives nice additional mana (that has stellar synergy with Malf’s trait).

It may not be ideal but QM is also part of the balance (sometimes large part). This is evidenced by Nova, Chromie, stealth in general and others.

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Do you pick Convection or Fel Infusion?

Ofcourse i do, my most played build is with Fel Infusion, the spell power overall is mighty powerfull, the little sustain is ok for laning.
Must remember that the spell power applies to all his abilities, not only Living bomb, and Flamestrike, but also to his ultimates(R abilities).
The spell power is passive, it is not WHEN activated.
Convection is sweet aswell, abit build dependent, but without alot of backline pressure(or even with sometimes) you can easily stack it up without problems.
Once you hit those 20 stacks, flamestrikes hits like a living nightmare, great for zoning.

For me the mana addict talent is a last resort, why lose 30% of your dmg done to survivability, when there are other options out there magewize.
Then in my opinion you might aswell just not pick him at all.

How effective do you thing Living bomb is (how often it spreads to other heroes)?

A huge part of HOTS is teamplay, both you and your team can controll how gathered the enemy team is, when force them in directions, a DPS that is about to die will run back if living bomb is on them, force them to run into a direction that is towards their team, abilitys to CC them in a bad spot, forcing their team to either back all the way up or take inn the living bomb.

imo if you wanna talk about something, let`s talk about level 20 talents.
Because those are so situation dependent, infinite living bomb spread for example, that is really comp and situation heavy, which makes that talent abit risky to pick, but the reward for it is soooo great, great design in my opinion.

It may not be ideal but QM is also part of the balance (sometimes large part). This is evidenced by Nova, Chromie, stealth in general and others.

Is it though?
QM is atleast for me just a practice ground, or test ground.
Learning heroes so i know how to build in which situations.

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You have to remember that you have ALOT of ways to force the living bomb spread.
You can also increase the explosion radius to improve your odds even more.

A tip would to not use HeroesFire or whereever as a guide, but rather as a start for something to go by, once you play a hero enough, you should figure out when to build what and how.
You will rarely see me with the same build on the same hero in matches.
EVERYTHING is situation based.

if i go abit back to topic, i love your idea of his “new ult”, it is very theme based and very W3 like.
But then again, spell power increase from ult, that would make Ana even more of a beast along with KT; and then we are seeing another Ana nerf, to yet again not see her in play anymore.

Despite her utilities making her super strong.

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Despite complains from players it is. Then again some also complained when heroes were changed to balance HGC.

I alternate between Flame strike build and Verdant spheres build.
The agains I still pick MA when I see dangerous dive hero (Genji, Greymane…) it makes me very hard to dive even with mediocre team.

Wouldn’t the overlap of two ults actually make them worse? You would be using two ults just to boost KT.
Plus I think Siphon magic is rather counterable being skillshot and over time effect.

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if i go abit back to topic, i love your idea of his “new ult”, it is very theme based and very W3 like.
But then again, spell power increase from ult, that would make Ana even more of a beast along with KT; and then we are seeing another Ana nerf, to yet again not see her in play anymore.

Wouldn’t the overlap of two ults actually make them worse? You would be using two ults just to boost KT.
Plus I think Siphon magic is rather counterable being skillshot and over time effect.

I mean overlapping is what makes it good.
Example illidan + Morales

You are improving on his strength, so if KT increases his own Spell power, to then get a % based spell power increase from Ana, that would make for an even greater spell power increase, making his flamestrikes probably Pyro like.

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Total Score - 17/20

Creativity - 4/5
Overall, this concept looks fine for creativity. Reworking Flamestrike from burst to more area denial is interesting and a change I can agree with; baselining the Mana Addict quest is a heavy-handed way of forcing more Tier 1 talent diversity but it’s not too bad. Reworking Pyroblast to a basic and adding a new heroics was an interesting choice, though I think the new heroic is kind of underwhelming. On the other hand, the new Pyroblast mechanic is a creative way of keeping the overall iconic image of the ability while making it more interactive. Ultimately, I feel that the baselining of Mana Addict and the bland second heroic warrant a point off.

Cohesiveness - 4/5
To some extent, your changes have solidified Kael’thas as an area denial mage, but I see a big problem with how his kit plays. Currently, KT has a harder time landing Flamestrike without confirming it through Gravity Lapse; Living Bomb offers a more consistent source of damage so that he can actually help his team. With your change replacing Living Bomb with Pyroblast, I think that KT ends up being too inconsistent. He has lots of potential high damage, but none of it can be confirmed together; basically, he has lots of delays and channeling for no guaranteed success, which I think makes him clunkier to play.

Thematic - 4/5
This kit is mostly on point for theme, but I have two complaints. Back to the new heroic Siphon Magic, I don’t know that it really feels like it belongs on Kael’thas; the most I can say is that blood elves do have a tendency of consuming Mana off of others, but I think that throwing it in on top of the Fire Mage/iconic KT ability archetype feels out of theme. Second, even if you don’t like the Living Bomb mechanic, it is a very iconic Fire Mage spell and I think its loss is a concern for theme.

Interaction - 5/5
I’m going to assume that new Pyroblast moves at a similarly slow and easy to handle speed. With that, I don’t see any problems with the interaction of this kit.

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LB consistend part is delayed single target dmg. Not the best for burst AoE mage.

That is exactly why he has GL, to set up his own combos. KT (like other mages) benefits greatly from friendly CC but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
I think that it will be slightly harder to land all of his abilities but the reward is worth it.

Siphon Magic is based on Siphon Mana (KT/Blood mage ability from WC3) I just reworked it to better fit HotS (no mana draining). As such the ability is thematicaly correct IMO.

This should be to some extent compenstated by Pyroblast being used far more often (Probably even more iconic ability).
Nontheless I might add it somewhere to his talent tree.

Overall than you kindly for feedback. :fire:

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Could have a Silence as part of it, so that it can’t just be brute-forced past. Maybe something like building up the spellpower buff as the Silence continues, then the equal spellpower debuff applies after for a few seconds?

That way, it can be a Channel instead of a skillshot, allowing it to be point-and-click Silence that’s interuptable. And, as a result, reasonably likely to actually hit the targets that need to be whacked with Spellpower reductions, instead of being blocked by frontline enemies or sidestepped.

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Since KT is a mage, the self buff is IMO more important than enemy debuff. As such it can be used on any enemy hero to empower KT.
Plus adding another channel would severly limity KT teamfight potential.

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wow this is reaaaally good good job i just have some notes:
1 if you are making convection always loose stacks upon death I think it would be fitting making it endlessly stackable but no reward after 20 stacks and each stack be 4 instead of 5. your idea makes convection even worse when wost people realize it is already his worst level 1 talent.

2 I see you gave kt more mana based talents if so I think mana addict should be limited at least baseline you could give him a talent that will make mana addict be endlessly stackable.

3 Sunfire enchant is already a useless talent giving kt an increased range helps but nerfing its spell power is kinda redundant maybe if the range was 2.2 I would understand but only 1 doesn’t help enough range would be good if kt had more basic attack talents take for example sylvanas an increase 1 range is huge for her cause she deals a lot of basic attack range kt doesn’t so 1 range is not a lot. I would change it to either have its normal spell power (15%) and increased 1 range or give it 2.2 range and remove the spell power part but will mkae all his basic attacks do magical damage this would give him more poke damage to compete with mages like ming.

4 twin sphere sucks it is really bad maybe giving it an additional functionality will help maybe something along the line of also granting 5-10% spell power will help idk.

5 I would change the name of the level 20 talent flash fire to master of flames it still holds relevant to the new talent and it sounds awesome

anyway even with all of that this still a pretty good remake it makes kt harder to play but rewards better players i really like it

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Overall Score

Category Rating
Creativity 5/5
Cohesiveness 4/5
Thematic 4/5
Interaction 4/5
Overall 17/20

Creativity

5/5

The changes here feel creative enough that I don’t have any major concerns about creativity.

Cohesiveness

4/5

Pyroblast feels suicidal to charge in 9/10 circumstances, being a self root for up to 4 seconds baseline that also prevents other abilities from being cast. I just feel like such an ability doesn’t work well with a squishy mage who wants to be prepared to use his defensive options at pretty much all times.

Thematic

4/5

The kit just feels a little too distant from the general Kael’thas/Fire Mage playstyle. I understand your intent was to shift Kael’s playstyle, but it just doesn’t quite feel like a Fire Mage with its focus on Zoning instead of Damage. I do, however, appreciate the inclusion of Siphon Mana somewhere in the kit.

Interaction

4/5

A few talents seem a bit overtuned. Nether Wind(Level 4|Tier 2) being a merging of it and Energy Roil makes it incredibly powerful, probably way better than its competing options. Arcane Shockwave is probably hitting for, on average, 500 damage at around level 20(which is 31 Regen Globes), which wouldn’t be the most major concern, if it didn’t give Kael the option to hit someone in melee for, and this is an estimation, so it might be a little off, approximately 1740 damage without a heroic or other talents, assuming he lands something like E-Q-W-1, which is about half of any squishy character without any charging on W or DoT from Q. Some numbers might need a little bit of decreasing, though not much, as this could only really be done in melee.

Additional Feedback

Kael’s level 16 and 20 talents for Pyroblast call it his E ability. Other than that, no concerns. (^_^)

1 Like