Kel'Thuzad talents

General Discussion
1

KT needs buffs. I swear despite having a larger healthpool than most other mages it feels like he has negative armor or somethin… Maybe its the standing still when combo casting… Li Mings gargantuan balls hurt my chin.

  • Strip Shields, Armor of The Archlich, and Phylactery buffs, actually every level 4 talent really, bring em more in line with other mages. (y’know, because thats what blizz says anytime they give mages armor)

  • Strip Shields, same thing, except it will also now give 30 spell armor as long as he has shields from his chains.

  • Armor of the Archlich, now also gives a passive 10 physical armor.

  • Phylactery now also gives 10 armor upon completion. (Phylactery really sucks lately, I find more use from strip shields if I’m being honest)

Level 7 talents

  • Accelerated Decay; is fine.

  • Chilling Touch; is groovy.

  • Ice Cold… Wtf is this blizz? You think people are gonna just STAND there? Do you know how long it takes for that thing to blow?

  • New Ice Cold; Increase Glacial Spikes explosion radius by 5%, After successfully pulling a hero its Cooldown is reduced by 50%. Pulling a hero with Glacial Spike reduces its detonation time by 75%, heroes caught in its detonation are rooted for 0.5 seconds.

Level 16

  • Arcane Echos; Delete this. Its worthless.

  • Hungering Cold; I don’t bother. But you might.

  • Power of Icecrown; I just wish I could pick something else. Something fun. Something groovy…

  • The New Damned Return!; Moved from level 20! Now we got some smooth jazz. Now creates a permanent Shade of Naxxramas that follows KT around until it is killed (Placed back on a 15 second cd) This provides counterplay to either a losing team, or a winning team by denying the Shades potent damage (I pick nothing else at 20 now, doesn’t matter what build I have, you shred waves and forts with it.)

Level 20

  • Deathchill; Tasty

  • Might of the Scourge; Remove this talent. And bring back the instant reset. I’ve seen more value from TLV in ARAM then this heaping pile of Kodo dung

  • Shifting Malace; Fancy as fug when you pull it off, but for Arthas’ sake increase the range just a lil bit

  • The Damned Return; its nice but I have a better plan

  • Thats all. Have a nice day.

  • Many edits later because my genius is frightening

2

Nah KT is fine the way he is right now, the problem with him is not the survivability but the reach of all his spells a bit underwhelming even compared to non mage ranged dps. He doesn’t need more armor, and tbh I prefer that KT stays the same since if he is getting a little buff he might tear people apart on QM and ranked mode.

I picked arcane echoes whenever I play Death and Decay build especially on maps like tombs of terror and infernal shrines against specialist heroes. I regularly play KT and tbh his kit just difficult to properly tweak since they are just plain oppressive

Oh yeah playing KT with Q build + level 13 reduce chain cooldown talent is really stupid on infernal shrines and if KT would have had that damned return moved to 16 he is just too powerful

3

kel’thuzad…needs…BUFFS? :smile: :smiley: :laughing: :sweat_smile: :rofl: :rofl: :joy: :smiley: :laughing: :joy: :rofl: :sweat_smile: :crazy_face: :crazy_face: :sweat_smile: :rofl: :joy: :laughing: :joy: :rofl: :expressionless:

1 Like
4

awww poor baby doesn’t like his insta revive talent :expressionless:

5

I have been summoned!

I dunno about buffs, but I do agree that some of KTZ’s talents could definitely be looked at. But that appears to be what you are mostly going for here se let me take a look.

Reasonable I suppose. Would make the talent a lot less niche than it currently is.

Hmm personally I take Armor of the Archlich by default, though that might be just because the other 2 aren’t that great in most situations. It sounds reasonable but I dunno.

It’s okay I would say. Definitely not as good as it used to be since they’ve nerfed his damage over multiple patches and as a result the healing he gets from it. I’ve personally been taking Armor of the Archlich unless I don’t have a healer though. I do still think it’s more useful than Strip Shields is as a generic talent.

I agree that the damage aspect of the spike is terribly inconsistent and basically never yields much value, though honestly I think all they really need to do is either buff the explosion radius (when taking the talent) or allow detonating the spike manually.

It’s pretty niche, not worthless necessarily. I personally take it against Medivh and Deathwing, and sometimes Samuro. I don’t really take it in many other situations besides those 3.

I do. Sometimes. Usually take Icecrown though. It has its uses.

Gonna have to disagree with the changes you made here. Something that is controlled by AI and just follows you around is difficult to fully make use of. Where it positions itself will matter greatly as anything can get in the way of its shot, so it’s important that KTZ has control over its movement/position. I’d be more open to this if he controlled it directly.

Personally I like the Shade functioning as it is though. Its limited lifespan is also plenty enough to keep it in check in when it comes to poking at structures from a distance, so I don’t really think it needs any more counterplay. Moving it to 16 seems like a bad idea as well.

In my opinion there’s nothing wrong with it so don’t fix it.

Might of the Scourge is definitely not useless, but it is extremely niche. It is useful against Sgt Hammer, Anas that take Eye of Horus, for comboing exclusively with Mosh, Entomb, or Nazeebo’s upgraded Zombie Wall, or for fights directly on top of boss camps (good luck predicting if those’ll even happen). It is also useful against Rags in Molten Core form but that’s really not much of a reason for me to take it. Unfortunately though it no longer helps with killing Abathur like it used to.

imo it needs to be less niche than it currently is. The main problem is that the duplicate fissures, when you consider the time since you cast the 1st fissure, take 4 whole seconds to land. It’s not going to hit very often if ever except in very specific scenarios. I personally think the duplicates should appear instantly after the 1st one hits, this would still make the talent niche but open up a lot more synergy potential with specific heroes.

Shifting Malice is fine. I take it often with great success.

6

He is also the only mage who can easily deal 7000 damage with spells near instantly without Ana Nanoboost (with passive completed).

1 Like
7

Oh btw hungering cold is my go to talent at 16 since it’s the only burst on demand and has higher impact with the easiest condition to met. That talent is awesome tbh, i like all level 16 talents they are all have their usefulness but I rarely pick power of the icecrown unless i tookk level 13 reduce chain cd with e build to minus armor

This is my suggestion for KT talent tweaks:

Strip shield : chain 10 times enemy players onto glacial spike, rewards longer spell range, quest progress is reset if Kel’Thuzad die before completion

Phylactery of Kel’Thuzad : reduce it back to 10 globes like it used to but reduce the healing by very small amount like 10% from the current amount

Armor of the arclich : slow 4 enemy heroes with single armor of the arclich activation to gain ability to chain heroes onto nearby buildings (like early KT launch)

Strip shield definitely is the go to talent against opponent with shields but added new functionality with reward to deal with pesky heroes like lunara so KT would be able to engage safely

Phylactery completion is being reduced like it used to but with smaller spell lifesteal gain

Armor of the arclich rewards enables Kel’Thuzad to play aggressive post completion even against lineup full of diving heroes so that he could catch fleeing opponent divers or punish divers near buildings

Ice cold doesnt need to be buff since way back then glacial spike was not given freely like now

8

Kelthuzad has the strongest burst in the game if you know how to land his skillshots and you wanna buff?

2 Likes
9

The only thing I would like to see on kt is for the glacial spike to be instant, or at least a lot faster. As is, once you chain a hero they have ample time to cleanse/medal to safety.

10

Let’s wait until they remove the anomaly that’s hard nerfing ktz before we talk about direct uff’s shall we?

4 Likes
11

I feel like KTZ and old chromie are very similar. Their baseline spells focus around blowing someone up.

Any talent tuning that you think sounds interesting will in practice be irrelevant. People will still choose the talents that help with bursting players down.

It’s not the talent tree’s fault or your great ideas, it’s the baseline kit that’s causing the issue.

They reduced chromie’s burst by splitting dragon breath into three smaller shots. They also gutted sand blast but gave you a clone baseline. If you still want good burst you have to hit with both sands and ensure those sands dont get body blocked by minions.

People are still gravitating towards particular talents, but overall chromie is a healthier character with a healthier talent tree.

…

If i were to rework KTZs base kit id do the following:

KTZs main source of damage should come from Death and Decay. All other spells (and talents) should be about ensuring enemies stay in DnD longer.

Shadow fissure still does too much burst hence its overwhelmingly high pick rate. Characters are dead by the time shadow fissure goes off. The DnD cast afterwards is often overkill.

Instead, fissure should have like a jaina shatter mechanic. Fissure itself deals small damage, but instead applies a debuff on the target for 4 seconds. This debuff increases the damage of KTZs spells on the target by XX%.
This change reduces KTZs burst, but following up a fissure with a DnD combo will still be very deadly.

So tl;dr: Less burst, but more CC to let the DoT do the work.

12

KT has “feast or famine” team composition issues. There’s not really any talent tweaks that can be done about it - they would have to rework completely like they did Chromie when she had this problem.

1 Like
13

More than a buff I think he need a proper build to allow him to have a better survivability but less burst. His Frost Blast was a good compromise but it has been nerfed to the ground with the medallion.

14

gonna be waitin’ a long time there, sister :expressionless:

15

Why does everyone think I’m a girl?