HotS Character: The Overmind
Another import from my blog. A new Heroes of the Storm character: The Overmind!
The Overmind is a specialist hero that dominates the battlefield by enhancing his minions (he considers the other heroes minions as well), manifestations and summoning other minions.
The Overmind is a unique hero that it can not be killed: He manifests physically in various forms, but his main manifestation is in the spawning point and lingers indefinitely. The spawn point will take an infested look to reflect his presence. His spells can be cast anywhere on the map as long as it’s close to an ally. Picture an imaginary range circle around each hero, mercenary, minion and building. In reality, as the cursor moves around with a spell selected, the closest circle to the point will be used to highlight the range.
The Overmind uses a resource called The Essence. This resource increases in time and through other means. He spends this resource to create manifestations.
His trait is “The Eternal Bond”. This will create an Overlord minion with each minion wave and each alive Overlord will grant essence for the Overmind passively and grant enemy more XP than a usual minion, making it important for both the enemy and the Overmind.
In addition to that, Overmind creates an manifestation that can attack enemies. The Overmind has direct control over this unit. Using the trait button will cast an ability on enemies that leaves a stacking dot. If killed, manifestation will be off and Overmind will need maximum essence points to create it again. This means that while the Overmind can cast abilities, it may be preferable to refrain if he wants a manifestation.
Possible talents:
- Better stats for the manifestation.
- Different ability for manifestation (or effects, such as stun, slow)
- Less essence to spawn manifestation
- More essence maximum
- More hp for overlords
- Overlords have aura.
- The Manifestation can “level up”. (Multi-phase quest)
His first ability is “Birthright”. Overmind brings together the flesh of all his minions. This area ability adds the hitpoints of all allies in an area, increases it by 5% and for 3 seconds, all allies use this hitpoint pool. Once the time ends, the new hitpoints depend on how much of the pool’s hp was lost.
Example: Raynor had 200/200 hp at the time of casting and 4 heroes were effected. By the end, half of the pool (excluding the extra) was lost. When the spell ends, Raynor will have 100/200 hp.
Possible talents:
- Increase added hitpoints
- Include the added hitpoints in the final hp loss (effectively healing all heroes of that %)
- Add damage resistance
- Larger area
- Longer duration
His second ability is Chrysalis. This ability targets an ally or an enemy hero. The affected hero, friend or foe, is caught in a living shell that loses hitpoints constantly and dissipates after 4 seconds. Enemies can attack it to decrease this timer. Enemies are constantly damaged and allies are constantly healed in this cocoon. On top of that, once they are out of the shell, they will gain (if friend) or lose (if foe) damage % and damage resistance % depending on how much they stayed in the cocoon.
Possible talents
- Increased heal-damage
- Area heal/damage
- Full heal/damage effect reached in shorter time
- More hp for cocoon
- Better bonuses
- Different bonuses (add movement speed)
- Worse ally effect but better enemy effect or vice versa
- Chrysalis bursts for damage when it dissipates
His third ability is Spawn Queen. This ability creates a flying, Overmind-era Queen minion that can do a number of things depending on what she’s targeted at.
If targeted on an enemy building, she will infest it. She takes 2 seconds to position herself on top of the building and she will be killed by defensive structures easily if she’s focused. Once in, she can no longer be attacked by the structures, but minions and heroes can still attack it. However, she has much more hit points in this form and she will slowly damage the building as long as she’s alive. The structure will also cease to function during this time. Her life will go down naturally but at a very slow pace. However, she will have more and more damage vulnerability as time passes, meaning both her natural decay and any attacks will do more and more damage in time.
If targeted on an enemy hero, the queen will stick on this hero similar to a hunter-killer mutalisk. She doesn’t attack, but she has a longer range and she will constantly cast an ability that slows a small area around the enemy hero and grants vision (guaranteeing the queen can always track this hero.) This is not a skill shot but it can be evaded by abilities that de-target spells (similar to de-targeting pyroblast.)
If targeted on a lane, a mercenary or a minion, she will attack the target and move to a lane to push it. She will occasionally cast Spawn Broodling, which kills an enemy minion directly and spawns two broodlings from it. This ability can target enemy hero minions such as a Zagara baneling or even a General of Hell. In fact, the queen will favor the enemy hero minions over regular ones.
Possible talents
- More damage to buildings
- Faster infestation
- No-range on queen
- Queen comes with mutalisk entourage
- Queen lives longer
- Ensnare starts with a 90% slow that quickly lowers down
- Longer stalker queen range
His first ultimate is Hour of Victory. This ability will replace the main building with the Overmind all forts and keeps with cerebrates for the next 30 seconds. The Core will replace regular minions with infested ones and spawn them at a double rate. Each wave will also have a pusher queen with them. Cerebrates will also spawn an infested minion every 3 seconds. Also, all buildings will receive a 20% shield (depending on their current hp.)
His second ultimate is Will of the Swarm. This ability will infest an enemy hero. A bar will appear on top of the enemy’s head. This will continuously shrink, dissipating after 30 seconds without external factors. As long as it’s there, the enemy hero will be an enemy to its team. Overmind’s team can attack the victim but the victim can only attack its team and heal the enemy (ie Overmind’s team).
If an enemy hero attacks the victim, the bar shrinks (in addition to decreasing the hitpoints of the victim).
If an ally hero attacks the victim, the same. However, it will shrink less.
If the victim attacks an enemy hero, the bar shrinks.
If the victim heals an ally hero (ie ally of Overmind), the bar shrinks.
Both the enemy and ally minions will attack the victim alike, but this won’t shrink the bar.
Shrinking is directly proportional to damage/heal done.
