A'zaam the Shadow Ripper

Description:

A'zaam the Shadow Ripper has been lurking in the depths of darkness for decades, while mastering the art of manipulating shadows. Finally, he has succeeded, the darkness is its friend, the fog its partner. With that, A'zaam re-emerged into the radiant world, more sinister than ever. With clever control of vision, A'zaam fears no one, not even the strongest warriors, as he stays hidden from their sight. Blablabla


Role: Lane-Support / General Support / Initiator

Base stats: Similar to ~Skywrath mage, a little tankier with slightly less intel.

Skills:

Q: Shadow Ball

A'zaam spits a ball at the ground, dealing damage and slowing all units in its area of effect and reducing their vision. The ball can stack multiple times with itself.

Ability: Target Area
Pierces Spell Immunity: No

Manacost: 20/25/30/35
Cast Range: 600/700/800/900
Missile Speed: 1000
Damage: 30/40/50/60
Slow: 20/25/30/35
Vision Reduce: 300/400/500/600 (day), 150/200/250/300 (night)
Duration: 8
Cooldown: 3


W: Shadow Veil

A'zaam covers a target area on the ground with a magical veil, preventing the enemy's vision of all units within (and beyond - similar to trees) the veil. If an enemy unit enters the veil, he or she is able to see within the veil, but vision outside is blocked instead.

Note:
- If attacks are issued to units even in fog of war, the attacked unit has vision of the attacking one.
- The veil affects observer wards, but does not affect True Sight in any way.
- Enemies using BKB and/or Night Stalker / KOTL holding an Aghanim's Scepter will be able to have unobstructed vision as normal.

Ability: Target Area
Pierces Spell Immunity: No

Manacost: 100/125/150/175
Cast Range: 1500
AoE: 300/400/500/600
Duration: 10
Cooldown: 80/70/60/50


E: Shadow Form

A'zaam mastered the art of attacking from the shadows - dealing additional damage when this is in effect, and the ability to cast spells and attack while staying unseen (e.g. right-clicking an enemy does not make him visible for 2 seconds).

Ability: Active, Target Self

Manacost: 80/100/120/140
Additional damage when seen by enemy: 0%
Additional attack damage when hidden from enemy: 10%/15%/20%/25%
Additional spell damage when hidden from enemy: 10%/15%/20%/25%
Duration: 8/10/12/14
Cooldown: 40


R: Shadow Bond

A'zaam forges a deadly bond with an enemy target hero, sucking his/her life force over time while A'zaam stays unseen. Unfortunately, the bond of darkness is so powerful that, when A'zaam is seen by the enemy, partial damage is dealt to A'zaam as well. The bond can be broken at any time.

Note: A'zaam can continue to drain the unit's health if he/she disappears out of vision, but does so at a heavily reduced rate.

Ability: Target Unit (Linken's blockable)

Manacost: 100/150/200
Cast Range (and bond break range): 1200/1400/1600
Life-drain of visible enemy when A'zaam remains unseen: 80/125/170 per second
Life-drain of unseen enemy hero (whether or not A'zaam remains unseen): 30/45/60 per second
Damage to A'zaam when he becomes visible: 30/40/50 per second

Duration: 15
Cooldown: 25/20/15

Hotkey to cancel Shadow Bond: press R again


Aghanim's Scepter Upgradeable:

- Shadow Veil's duration is extended to 20 seconds, and its cooldown reduced to 30 seconds.
- Shadow Veil now heals allies inside the veil for 1/1.5/2% of their total HP per second.
- Shadow Veil now damages enemy units inside the veil for 1/1.5/2% of their total HP per second.
- Shadow Veil now pierces BKB (magic immune heroes will have their vision reduced as well), and creates obstructed vision even with KOTL and NS Aghanim upgrades.

- Shadow Form is now a permanent passive ability.

- Allows for a three-way Shadow Bond (the third being an ally). Heals the ally for the same amount drained by A'zaam. However, if A'zaam becomes visible, the ally takes similar damage as well. Note: The ally can be visible to enemy heroes, neither A'zaam or it will take any damage.
Hotkey to ally: F, Hotkey to cancel Shadow Bond: R.


Any suggestions or reworks to this model? Feel free to post your comments!

Any suggestions? Feel free to post it! I am a pretty experienced Dota player, having started playing Dota 1 about 7 years ago. In my opinion, while most heroes have various stat changes and "buff-able" attributes now (e.g. attack speed, movement speed etc), little has been explored and done regarding vision.

Vision is one of the most important attributes in Dota, and fog-of-war is heavily relied upon by higher-skilled players. Although some work have been done in the recent few patches (e.g. Luna having additional vision, KOTL and NS Aghanim's, Moon Shard etc), I feel that it is not enough. I've decided to incorporate some of that into a hero - with knowledge of vision being the core requirement for it. As such, the hero is not easy to play - requiring some advanced knowledge of fog-of-war etc, and is more suitable for higher-skilled players.

That being said, it is still extremely difficult to play this hero well (5 enemy heroes have great vision on the map, blinding one or two of them isn't going to do anything). I've decided to make the first skill an AoE instead (originally it was a target unit, but I realized how ridiculous that was if just two enemy heroes decide to stick together). Thus this hero mainly excels at catching a solo enemy hero on the map, and can only rely on Shadow Veil for major team-fights.

This hero also calls for some unexpected plays (e.g. covering an enemy observer ward with the great cast range of Shadow Veil), and can have great synergy with certain heroes (e.g. Shadow Veil + Slark). Then again, lots of understanding of how the game works (vision) as well as practice with this hero is needed.

Note also that the numbers that I've typed above are all mainly nonsense, I just rushed through the hero concept taking about an hour. Some of them are kind of bugged or really broken (come to think about it Level 3 Shadow Bond is really quite gay as long as you have vision of the enemy). Please feel free to give suggestions / nerfs / buffs to those numbers!

Is like Riki **** Night Stalker lol