[Rework Concept] Gazlowe

Hey guys! This is my ideas to make Gazlowe a better choice and to align him with Blizzard new talent design philosophy. Since Blizzard will scrap the specialist role, Gazlowe’s role will be unclear and I wanted to try to give better tools at dealing damage while retaining great zoning capabilities. Let me know what you guys think!

**No changes in his base stats
Trait: Salvager - No change
Q: Rock-It Turret! - Damage slightly reduced to adjust to the rework.
W: Deth Lazor - Now reaches max range and damage over 1,5 seconds instead of 3 seconds (current Hyperfocus Coils made baseline). Damage slightly reduced to adjust to that change.
E: Explodium Charge - No change

R1: Robo-Goblin - Activate to gain 30 Armor and 50% bonus Basic Attack damage for 4 seconds. During those 4 seconds, Gazlowe also gains 50% increased attack speed and 50% increased movement speed that decays to 30% over 2 seconds.
Passive: Gazlowe permanently gain 50% increased Basic Attack damage.

R2: Grav-O-Bomb 3000 - Pretty much the same, but radius increased by 15-20%.

Talents

Level 1
NEW Goblin Repair: Regen Globes act as if they were scraps. They heal for 70% more health and mana.
Scrap-O-Matic Smelter: No change
Break It Down!: No change

Level 4
Ark Reactor (E): Reduces Xplodium Charge’s cooldown by 4 seconds (up from 2). If Xplodium Charge hits an enemy Hero, gain 2 charges of Rock-It! Turret.
Clockwork Steam Fist (Q): Damaging an enemy Hero increases the duration of Rock-It Turrets by 2 seconds. Basic Attacks against enemy Heroes reduces their cooldown by 2 seconds.
Hired Goons: Rock-It Turrets deal 50% more damage to Minions, Monsters and Mercenaries. Mercenaries near a turret deal 25% more damage.

Level 7
Extra Tnt (E): Increases Xplodium Charge damage by 50% per enemy Hero hit, up to 150%.
Superior Schematics (Q): Rock-It Turrets deal 8% increased damage every they deal damage to an enemy Hero, up to 40% for 3 seconds.
Goblin Fusion (W): Deth Lazor can be charged for 1 additional second to increase its damage bonus by an additional 75% (down from 100%).

Level 13
X-Tra Large Bombs (E): Increases Xplodium Charge radius by 30%. Being stunned. rooted or if Gazlowe reaches 40% of his max health causes an Xplodium Charge to drop at Gazlowe’s feet. This effect has a 10 second cooldown.
EZ-PZ Dimensional Ripper (W): No change (slow on Deth Lazor)
Engine Gunk (Q): Rock-It! Turret attacks slow enemies by 10% for 2 seconds, stacking up to 30%. They also gain 50 Spell Armor.

Level 16
Kwik Release Charge (E): Hitting at least 1 enemy Hero with Xplodium Charge reduces its cooldown to 1 second.
NEW Hyperfocus Coils (W): Hitting an enemy Hero with Deth Lazor at max charge refund its cooldown and mana cost by 50% and also deal bonus damage to Heroes equal to 3% of their max health.
Rock-It! Turret XL (Q): Rock-It! Turrets attack up to 2 additonal enemies for 75% damage and increase their maximum charges from 2 to 3.

Level 20
Mecha-Lord (R1): Passive Basic Attack damage increased from 50% to 100% and passively gain 25 Armor. Active bonus Basic Attack damage increased from 50% to 100%.
Miniature Black Hole (R2): Increases Grav-O-Bomb radius by 15% (down from 25%) and damage by 50%. It will trigger a second time after a 2 second delay.
Turbo Mode: Activate to increase Rock-It Turrets attack speed by 40% for 8 seconds. Every third attacks, they will fire their own Deth Lazor aimed for nearby targets, prioritizing Heroes (equivalent of current Firin’ Mah Lazorz). 60 seconds cooldown.
Passive: Increase Rock-It Turret attack range by 20%.
It’s Raining Scraps: Scraps from structures count increased from 1 to 2. Minions death have 50% chance to drop 1 Scraps and Heroes death drop 2 Scraps.

1 Like

As a level 85 gazlow:
Lazer is in a really wierd back-wards synergy with most of his kit.

I feel that instead of making hyper-focus baseline, they should make Dimensional ripper baseline. This talent opens up a wide variety of options (sadly his lazer build sucks overall)
This way the spell doesn’t lose its unique identity (It used to even take 6 seconds to charge)
Heres a few talents id like to throw out for consideration:

Fortify: Gazlow gains 30 armor and 100hps while channeling his deth lazor
GostNGoblinZ: Gazlow becomes invisible while channeling his deth lazor.
Premature Detonation: (20 sec cd) Instantly detonates any Xplodium laying on the ground.
Exploding Turrets: Turrets that survive longer than 10 seconds will drop an explodium charge on death.
DetecTurrets: Turrets are granted 50% increased vision, and can detect invisibility.
Fake-Detonators: (12s cd 2 charges) Gazlow drops a ‘fake’ bomb that looks exactly like the real one, until it explodes (dealing 0 damage, and having no stun) maybe sprays confetti or something.
L1 Extra TNT: Now increases damage of explodium to non-heroic targets by 2.5x (giving him excellent waveclear)
L1 Scrap-o-matic and Break it Down! should be combined into 1 talent (3.5x cdr instead of 4x, and still 60 mana) (both of these tallents are pretty bad)

L1 Your Goblin repair sounds decent for keeping gazlow in a more aggressive role, because he would immediately benefit from the globes in a less subtle way than a stacking regen quest. I like this, though it would likely need some fine tuning.
L4 Ark reactor. Gain 60 mana and 1 charge of turrets if explodium hits a hero (instead of 2 charges of turrets) CDR remains the same.
L7 Extra TNT: Not a big fan of this design, it banks everything on your wombo which is already ridiculously awesome.
L7 I do like your take on superior schematics, though I feel like a permenent 5% damage bonus for the life of the turret (caping out at 40%) would be nice
L13. I dont think X-tra Large Bombs needs a buff, as its top tier here already.
L13 I do like moving engine gunk, and the buff you suggested would put it in-line for the move, however I think a less impactful slow might be cooler (5% slow per attack, 35% max slow)
L16 Kwik Release Charge absolutely hate this idea, it breaks gazlows core wombo (explodium into grav-o into second explodium) If it needs a buff, I would suggest something like reduce the cooldown of explodium by 4 seconds if it does not hit a hero. would work well (allow you to lay down better zoning, and further advance your siege capabilities)
L16 Hypercocus Coils Lazor itself is used scarcily enough that a reset on it isnt worthy of any talent tier, much less 16. (I know your lazor would see more use with the short cooldown so it does make some sense with your design)
L16 Rocket Turret XL: I think turrets are already the top-of-the-line pick for 16, so i see no reason to bake the extra targets into it.

L20 triggering a second time after 2 seconds, almost guarantees a double hit; not saying this is a bad thing, but lose the 50% bonus damage if you want it to be even remotely balanced since you are already basically doubling its damage.
L20 Turbo Mode; Yes, an active way to improve turrets would be a great idea, maybe Just 50% attackspeed and 50% attack-range (without the lazer)

L20 I agree that in its current layout raining scrap cant compete with the other choices, however your idea would make it overpowered beyond belief IMO. (namely the 50% drop rate on minions)
Howabout replacing it with a ‘reset’ button (after 2 seconds of channeling) gazlows health, mana and basic ability cooldowns are reset. (90 second cooldown)

I used to play Gazlowe in diamond league, back when he was considered an absolute “never-pick” hero. Back then I would play using almost only Lazers, but basically firing a lazer from backline, scrap all my turrets on cooldown, to keep my lazer cooldown at 2-4 seconds. This way I could chop at the backline with good positioning, often hitting full teams continuously in fights taking away 30% at max charge.

It was absolutely awesome to sacrifice movement for long range poke. However, now the lazers deal too little damage for this playstyle and I can no longer get Movement speed/disable (EZ-PZ) with Hyperfocus Coils as they are now on same talent tier. Also Hanzo has longer range than my turrets now anyway.

I feel like Gazlowe is such a great and unique hero, being pretty much the only hero with a immobile cast charge. While at the same time having turrets that you can kite around. He just needs adjustment.

Yea I remember when lazer build was actually great. they ended up nerfing it pretty hard even before the rework. robo-goblin is always in a hard place though,
as a passive ult. Maybe they could change it to be even more active. A possible Idea.

Robo-Goblin XL(60s cooldown, 8 second duration)
Activate to gain: unstoppable, 30% movement speed, 25 armor,150% bonus attack damage, and reduce the mana-cost of abilities to 0.
then they add the same morph animation the goblin tinkerer from warcraft 3 has.

Also I think Gazlow might be nice with a ‘refresh’ talent, and since my T16 lacks something for the lazer build;
L16: Hyper Regen Coils: While charging your lazer, you heal for 100 hitpoints and 15 mana per second.

EVERY ONE HATES GAZLOWE
EVERY ONE HATES GAZLOWE
EVERY ONE HATES GAZLOWE
hi, i’m a very casual low level player. Thank you Memile for bringing Gaz an article and candlelit vigil.

  1. i want to play this hero most of the time. why can’t i just play this hero and not get yelled at? He’s not supposed to be good situationally. He’s supposed to have good abilities for any situation.
  2. Isn’t Gaz a demolitionist? I ‘thought’ that when people see Gazlowe they were supposed to think, “uh oh, our towers are done for”. I’m not sure that he dominates even this niche.
  3. Every one agrees the Xplodium charge er whatever takes too long. easy fix.
  4. If turrets did a little more damage they would justify being easy to take out at top level play. Even at low level players know what to do vs turrets.
  5. I guess every one gets that Gaz is mana thirsty. That’s a serious early game handicap and anything early game is a serious entire game handicap.

There’s a lot of travelling in the game. It’s weak to grab orbs and hang by mercenaries when there are places to be.
This hero gets humiliated very often in ranked team chat. It would be nice if people were saying “well actually he’s mid tier in any situation, and pros sometimes crush with him”.

Fixes, at the very least, probably not enough:

  1. a little more turret damage, 8 percent?
  2. quicker detonate on xplodium… -.5 seconds. but i like the whole 3, 2, 1 thing. Keep that.
  3. add health to scrap… about the same percentage on the bar as the mana
  4. more damage to structures when using ult (R)obo, a crumble effect! << damage over time to structures from robo melee attacks. very stylish!
  5. double the mercenaries bonus (hired goons) and its still probably not the best talent, but would be way cool. Gaz is supposed to be using the map to great effect.
  6. Have towers give up a big cake of yummy scrap. A scrap cake. When i look at you all i see is the big cake of scrap waiting inside of you for me. (worth 5 scraps)
  7. If ‘raining scrap’ rained scrap from the sky for all allies and included that little healing buff then suddenly Gaz makes new friends.
  8. A 5 percent increase in grav o bomb damage.
  9. lazer costs 5 less mana to use and charges 10 percent faster (before coil)
  10. Make that punching quest (steamfists) also reduce turret cooldowns as you go, not just after a while.
  11. Make ‘turret XL’ shoot two extra bullets at full damage, not just 60 percent. Even still it won’t be nearly the best at that level.

i dunno about regen globe quest. i wish i could comment on that. i only tried it a couple times.

I’d like to bump up:

i read the patch notes from last year and i can’t believe how people let blizzard off the hook. It’s like the star wars argument. It’s as if Blizzard could say “Well… we just hate some of our heroes, some of them suk. They aren’t supposed to be that good. There are great heroes, the assassins, then there’s the bad ones, usually specialists because well… we don’t really know what to do with them. We don’t like them and neither does any one else. We don’t really want them to be top tier or even core for that matter. They’re ok on Thursdays if it’s sunny and that’s about it. We’re thinking of renaming the game to AotS (Assassins of the
Storm) or “A s s Hats” maybe because it’s all about tanks and assassins and a healer. Don’t bother watching to see if we care if we ever see Gazlowe not get totally dumped on by most immature gamers in ranked matches. We think that’s funny and totally a part of the game that we’ve centered around lil sprite like snipers with no need for synergetic teammates. Thanks for asking, but no, Gazlowe will never be top tier. He’s just there as cannon fodder.”
I don’t think i made my point clear enough.
EVERY ONE HATES GAZLOWE

The 2017, spring i think, patch was meant to steer players into a different role, away from laning and more for team helping, yet he’s not very good at being that bruiser that robo was supposed to help with. So now he’s not really good at anything! Therefore Gaz is pretty useless unless it’s an average player in silver league who’s having a good game and nobody cares because they’re winning by a smidge. I don’t want to hear how He COULD get to diamond or master with a good player. We’re talking about getting this guy on the frickin board. Make every hero core tier. He’s not supposed to be good situationally, he’s supposed to be good in any situation and strong occassionally. That’s a specialist right? NO?
What kind of designer makes a hero designed to fail in most situations?
(tough love, my lovelies)
personally i actually like the choices at each talent level. I think they are creative and i applaud the set up.
Gaz’ potential is not a matter of opinion. I’m sure Blizzard can google “HOTS tier list” as did and read what people are picking, watch youtube video of why he doesn’t work in competitive play. It’s pretty straight forward. Turn this game on it’s head a little bit.