Blighted Frost - Adjusted functionality: The quest reward now causes Frost Nova to also Stun targets for the first 0.75 seconds of the Root.
Level 4:
Strip Shields - Removed.
New Talent: Death Shroud - Activate to gain 30 Spell Armor and deal 50 damage per second to nearby enemies for 6 seconds. 90 second cooldown. Triggered for free whenever a Hero dies.
Level 7:
Ice Cold - Changed Functionality: Glacial Spike's Cooldown is reduced by 5 seconds, it Slows nearby enemy Heroes by 40%, and its range is increased by 12.5%.
Level 13:
Icy Grasp - Adjusted Functionality: The 0.5 seconds of cooldown reduction towards Frost Nova applies to all Slowed enemies damaged by Kel'thuzad, instead of only enemies Slowed by Frost Nova.
Level 20:
Shifting Malice - Cooldown reduced from 240 to 120 seconds.
HailFall Comment: I noticed Kel’thuzad has one underpreforming talent at almost every tier, so I wanted to improve that. Here’s my thought process behind each.
Level 1, the Idea was to give the W quest a distinct purpose: being more effective against Heroes who can do some kind of damage mitigation on their own through PROTECTED/ice block/armor/etc.
Level 4: I’m not a big fan of anti-shield talents in general, and Kelthuzad was very lacking in ways to mitigate burst damage against himself. I could have increased the shields from Strip Shields, but I don’t really think that would be super helpful when you really need it (like incoming Pyroblast or Pulse Bomb). I decided to make a Spell Armor talent for Kel’thuzad instead. It’s not as powerful as Archlich to preserve his dive weakness somewhat, but 30 Spell Armor certainly helps him stay alive in a pinch. Having it automatically trigger on a death and the area damage both give it some flavor and make it distinct from Armor of the Archlich.
Level 7: Theoretically this encourages using it as terrain instead of just a chainpost so it can get more value on maps with tight corridors. It also helps newer Kel’thuzads hit their Frost Nova.
Level 13: Synergy with allied slows helps an underpreforming talent find a place blah blah blah.
Level 20: Shifting Malice has been kinda weird ever since it was added, and I really don’t think the extreme cooldown is necessary. 120 seconds still greatly limits its viability as an escape, and makes failed aggressive plays with it less punishing.
These buffs aren’t that bad.
Just remember that having too much of a good synergy for W 1 and 13 will most likely power creep it.
It’s the same thing as what they did to Jaina AA + Blizzard build.
Meta shifts are fine, but not when the build gets to over 60% win rate. like W Jaina and W Sonya.
Big nono, especially when it comes to heroes that trigger armor through use of abilities. You all know how ridiculous Malfurion’s lvl 1 sleep talent is.
thats because its a big aoe sleep on everything that gets hit, and it only triggers after the root ends. The sleep also lasts much longer. So this isn’t really a good comparison.
You pretty much ruin shield wall, deflect and similar abilities. A skilled KTZ will cast nova at the landing spot while the target(s) are still in motion, meaning if such defensives are used early, they help mitigate a tiny amount of damage, while they completely fail at preventing a fatal combo.
Do we also really need another ranged interrupt for mosh pit or sanctuary? Realistically with the numbers as they are regardless of stun length, you might even be able to interrupt Alexstrasza’s dragon transformation, which just inconveniences other heroes for no good reason.
The only realistic buff we can give KTZ is by giving his trait’s first reward a portion of the second reward’s bonus spell power:
Now his trait goes as follows…
First reward grants Glacial Spike and increases KTZ’s spell power by 25%
Second reward now only grants an additional 50% spell power
These two changes help smooth out KTZ’s extremely feast or famine style of gameplay so that he is at least partially useful once he reaches 15 stacks. He still requires you to land your chains and root enemy heroes, he’s just no longer half a hero before 30 stacks, but now at 15 (since he gains some lethality).
EDIT: Weird, why is my post replying to GriM? Eh whatever.
This is far too much of a buff imo. I don’t think people will be happy when some of their abilities that used to check KTZ’s combo stop working.
Strip Shields is really, really, really niche. I take it in very small, specific scenarios. It could definitely stand to be better.
Death Shroud sounds like it’s only useful for the activatable 30 Spell Armor, which is on a 90 second cooldown. Everything else about it is not that great. You’d need to maintain a dangerous distance of the enemy to get value from the damage, and triggering the spell armor from killing others isn’t that useful as dead people won’t typically hurt you, and it’s unreliable for mitigating telegraphed damage.
Here is my suggestion: Strip Shields - Now grants 20 Spell Armor while the Shields are active.
I think that this would be an improvement honestly (which isn’t hard because the talent is really, really bad currently), and would at least provide a consistent benefit, though I don’t think it’s enough for it to compete with the other two talents. Maybe increase the Slow a bit or have the spike deal periodic damage to enemies near it?
Eh, this would be an improvement but I still likely wouldn’t take it. My main gripe with the talent is that Frost Nova relies heavily on other abilities in order to reliably hit, most notably Chains. But Frost Nova will be off cooldown long before Chains is for it to be able to help with keeping enemies in place.
I would personally remove the CDR of the talent entirely, and instead merge what remains of the talent with Chains of Ice. Then make a new 13 talent.
This is fine, as currently Shifting Malice is far too easily interrupted to justify how long the cooldown is. It gets interrupted with the slightest knockback.
I think the talent itself looks fine on paper. It is the most consistent talent out of the two other E talents provided it increases Frost Nova’s base slow by 20% (35% to 55%). In my opinion, the CDR portion of the talent is slightly too low (currently at 0.5s), 0.75s would be much better.
Yes, but the player might need extra incentives to pick it over Chain Link, which makes him able to pull off his deadly combo 2x as many times for the rest of the match if he reliably hits chains.
It also removes the mana cost making him require hearthing back or tapping fountains less frequently. In a vacuum, Icy Grasp might be ok as a Frost Nova talent but competing against those two on 13 it’s objectively quite bad.
I would welcome that change. some maps just dont let KTZ combo anyone at all for a really long time aka Warhead were eveyone are spread out and dont let him get a single stack.
The stun sounds nice, but i think that the root issue here is that it doesnt realy benefit KTZ combo wise as the damage gain is often not going to be enough to compete with the chains anyway. The stun at most makes the chain hit easier. But as its not adding reliable damage, i suspect its going to remain behind.
But hey, thats at least a good sign on when you want to try to buff it.
Although i hoped you would also come up with a potential idea for The Plaguelands, since that talent probably needs a bigger change (maybe KTZs entire Q build needs a buff?)
Probably not the best person to comment since I don’t really know how to play KTZ, but lets give it a try anyway. To me it seems KTZ doesn’t have that many underperforming talents so much as niche ones. Only Strip Shields and Ice Cold are below 50% WR diamond/master. On Strip Shields, Icy Grasp and Shifting Malice I agree with OP, on others I’m slightly reserved.
Frost Nova has only 2 talents, at levels 1 and 13. Lvl 1 is fine but 13 is garbage. If Icy Grasp were buffed it probably would also raise the popularity of Blighted Frost.
With Ice Cold I’m kinda curious why it’s not picked more often since the other talents aren’t that great? I think the logic behind the talent is to make people use Glacial Spike more offensively. So what gives? Is it too slow, too little damage? I’d say the talent could use a minor reduction in cast time to make it more appealing.
I really think Shifting Malice is not a lvl 20 talent. Like Trample it should probably be one tier down.
It’s not picked often because the other two talents, Chilling Touch especially, dwarf its usefulness in utility and damage.
Accelerated Decay is only worth taking when you take The Plaguelands at 1, but its damage is not to be underestimated.
Chilling Touch is basically a guaranteed Slow and extra damage and makes it a bit harder for enemies to dodge the chain. It’s also great for extra waveclear. It’s really good and you should basically always take it if you did not take The Plaguelands at 1.
Ice Cold on the other hand is only useful for its CDR, nothing else. It takes 4 seconds after using Spike for it to explode so they typically have time to move away, coupled with the fact that the AoE radius is too small makes getting value from it fairly inconsistent. Furthermore, you only really need the spike in situations where there are no other feasible enemies nearby to chain to, as chaining 2 enemies together yields more value. The 30 seconds cooldown is plenty for being available in those situations.
