Hero Creation Contest Winners!

After one tough week of judging, we are excited to finally announce the winners of our latest hero creation contest!

The number of concepts that have participated in this contest has surpassed all the previous contests together (over 120 concepts). We've received plenty of great feedback on our creation tool and we are going to bring improvements in order to make your concepts even greater and easier to create!

Before moving on to the worthy winners, we would like to thank everyone for participating and for trying out our new creation tool, the concepts are truly amazing and even IceFrog himself could take some inspiration from your cool creations! :)

Grand Prize Winners (Arcana Of Choice) giogsgs12 Since the early days of DotA we've heard of the name of Aghanim and his mighty scepter, a powerful relic that we often use to boost our abilities and dominate the game. Multiple concepts of Aghanim have been created, but the one that stood out the most was giogsgs12's, the creator of Aghanim, the Arcane Master! Aghanim is a ranged intelligence hero that excels at dealing magical damage while boosting respectively decreasing the magical power of his allies and enemies. His abilities are very unique and well built, being also illustrated for easier understanding of how the ability actually works (nice touch!). The nemesis of magic damage dealers is Black King Bar, but that's not necessarily the case for the Arcane Master, since both his Arcane Erosion and De-Synchronize work through magic immunity. Sounds cool? Make sure to check out the concept yourself! Erkaderka The demons of DotA should beware, because Azvitrael the Angel of Life steps in ready to smite whoever stands in his team's path! Erkaderka has crafted a ranged intelligence hero that focuses on supporting his teammates no matter the cost. Even though his abilities are mostly oriented on healing and regeneration, his ultimate ability Heaven's Light can both be used defensively (to heal) and offensively (to damage). Heavy right clickers should be careful around Azvitrael, because his Smite ability both blinds the enemy target and deals damage according to the damage the target has dealt in the last 4 seconds. Interesting mechanic, heroes like Clinkz should watch out when trying to sneak a kill! Make sure to give the Angel of Life a look! delta17 He's back to take away one more Arcana, delta17, a grand winner of our previous creation contests, has created another award-worthy hero, Fræʃir, the Foulfell Warden! This hero shines at creating havoc on the battlefield and making the lives of his enemies tough. His abilities bring forth interesting mechanics and enable Fræʃir to confuse, damage and limit the pathways that the enemies can take in fights. Allies should not feel safe in the presence of the Foulfell Warden, as his ultimate Executioner's Wrath doesn't only execute enemies, but also allies caught in the area of effect. Massive pure damage, so pure that it kills whoever stands in the path! Make sure to not miss out on the great demon guard of Foulfell!

Honorable Mentions (Frostivus 2017 Treasure)Congratulations to our honorable mentions! They've created some wonderful hero concepts, keep up the great work! Terathiel - Interis, the Living Contradiction Interis is a ranged intelligence hero that is best played as a hard carry, as suggested by the author. Since his abilities require high amounts of mana to be casted, Interis might feel slow and weak in the early game, but as the game progresses and he gains experience and gold, he becomes a force to be reckoned with. His first ability, Collapsing Star, looks very versatile since it gives Interis the possibility to teleport in a 300 radius, which can be useful both in defensive and offensive scenarios (to escape or to catch fleeing enemies). Logic Game is his next ability, which first reduces magic resistance based on strength difference, then deals damage based on intelligence difference and ultimately slows based on agility difference. This seems like a very fun spell to use and it suggests that Interis would play best with items that grant a lot of stats. The remaining basic abilities are both passive and connected to each other, the first granting Interis the ability to negate physical attacks and respond with one with reduced damage, and the second granting attack speed and a chance to deal bonus magical damage in an area whenever dealing physical damage. Finally, his ultimate, Tesseract, converts a percentage of his mana into health whenever he takes damage, removing negative buffs each time it occurs. Also, the closer the enemies are to the Tesseract, the slower they move. Stay away! >> View Full Concept Here << MPick - Zygrant, The Goatfolk Rune Junkie We need more ranged strength heroes and that's exactly what MPick offers us! Zygrant is a durable hero that can be played as a support or offlane, being able to efficiently push the lanes and take down towers while helping his teammates. His first ability, Gash, is what makes him strong at pushing and destroying towers, since it deals damage to all the enemies and structures it hits, after a short delay. Even better, it pierces spell immunity! It feels like Poison Nova never ends, it surely will be the case thanks to Ardent Hold, which pauses the expiration time of buffs on allies and of negative buffs on enemies. Interesting enough, if Zygrant manages to save up for an Aghanim's Scepter, he can boost the health regeneration of his allies or extend the duration of stuns and roots on the enemy. Killing Zygrant will be a pain for the enemy he chooses to attack, because Mark of Animus applies a negative buff that doesn't allow the target to attack Zygrant for the duration. Here comes the catch, his ultimate, Sterling Stride, places a buff on a teammate that reduces the incoming damage it receives while granting them splash damage. But that's not all, the enemies affected by Mark of Animus are unable to attack the target while the ultimate's buff is active. Good luck dispelling that buff, oh wait, it cannot be dispelled! >> View Full Concept Here << shadowgospel - Kain, the Bloodbound Kain is a strength melee hero that was created to be played as a carry. His abilities greatly influence his early game enabling him to fit in different lanes and deal with multiple enemies. The Bloodbound steals the vigor of his enemies to strengthen himself and kill them faster. His first basic ability, Life Shaver, deals damage to an enemy based on their remaining health while also preventing them from healing for a few seconds. Other enemy units standing near the primary target will be damaged for the same amount, but they can be healed. Kain's second ability also deals area damage, but additionally steals health and attack speed from the enemies hit. Sounds like a lot of area damage so far! In combination with Dark Harvest, his passive Unholy Fervor will work wonders, since it grants Kain bonus damage as a percentage of his attack speed, meaning all the attack speed stolen by Dark Harvest will also boost his damage. Fighting the Bloodbound sounds scary so far, but what makes him even scarier is his ultimate, Sins of The Past, which embodies Kain's shadow that follows him wherever he goes attacking enemies that get too close. Teleporting to the shadow is also possible, which could make for some cool plays! >> View Full Concept Here << LagMachine - Gal'Zeruk, the Great Reformer Gal'Zeruk is a versatile ranged intelligence hero that is able to deal high amounts of magic damage and manipulate the environment to his advantage. His first ability, Restructure, allows him to create a path that allies and enemies can use, but which damages enemy units when casted. This ability can be very useful when roaming and ganking, since you can create unexpected ways to travel the map to surprise the enemies. His second ability is Disintegrate, and just as the name suggests, it deals damage, slows and reduces the armor of the enemies in the target area. The affected area also grants vision for a few seconds. The third ability of Gal'Zeruk grants him attack and missile speed while also stealing a part of the target's mana with each attack and damaging them for half the amount stolen. And finally, Arcane Refraction is his ultimate ability, which gains charges every time a nearby hero suffers 100 damage or more. The charges can be used to either heal an ally or himself. The ultimate can further be upgraded by Aghanim's Scepter, which allows Arcane Refraction to target multiple ally units around Gal'Zeruk. >> View Full Concept Here << Yzreel - Askeladd, the Gunsmith Magazine after magazine, Askeladd keeps reloading and shooting his enemies to death using special attachments and exceptional marksmanship. Askeladd is a ranged agility carry that moves fast around the battlefield but bears limited munition in his weapon's magazine. His abilities are all about his weapon, improving it in different ways to better and more efficiently kill his opponents. Askeladd can attach to his gun an Extended Muzzle, which deals bonus damage in a line over a longer range, but dealing lower damage for each unit hit. Another attachment in his arsenal is Additional Barrel, which deals great damage in a cone while applying a maim effect to the enemies hit. Each shot consumes two bullets and Askeladd's range decreases from 450 to 350. Every shot counts and surely the Gunsmith knows, because his passive ability Bandolier increases his magazine capacity and damage per bullet missing, making him even stronger at taking down his foes. And finally, his ultimate ability Total Customization, improves his attack no matter the attachment he's using. If no attachment is used, Askeladd's attacks deal higher pure damage and have a small chance to mini-stun. Using Extended Muzzle during the ultimate will greatly increase the range of his attacks and give him a chance to critical strike. In the case of Additional Barrel, the bonus damage of his skill is multiplied. Let's not forget Bandolier, which also grants even more damage for each bullet missing. It's high noon! >> View Full Concept Here << ELF1N - Ravenhook, the Avaricious Jeweler We have heard the name of Ravenhook before when Artifact was first teased, being one of the first heroes of the game. Will it make it to DotA? That's something what we shall find out in time, but for now Ravenhook is a melee agility hero that uses his cursed jewelry to take down his enemies. The first ability of his arsenal is Cursed Ring, which places a curse on an enemy unit that drains its health and places a 1 second cooldown on its item and abilities whenever damaged. His second gimmick is Riftshadow Amulet, which creates two uncontrollable illusions that act just like Ravenhook, but don't deal damage. Make your enemies waste all their abilities on illusions and then fight! The Jeweler also has a passive ability named Mark of Avarice, which places a negative buff on enemies hit making them receive less gold from kills and lose double the gold on death. This would be a pain for the heroes that are trying to save up for expensive items (looking at you Anti-Mage)! Let's not forget about his ultimate, Jewelry Master, which is Ravenhook's main charm. His ultimate duplicates the most valuable item of the target and deals damage to it based on its cost. Ravenhook can use the item for a few seconds or until he dies, pretty awesome! Thanks for the free Scythe of Vyse! >> View Full Concept Here << fdsa4321lbp22 - Joshua, the Archbishop of Death Joshua is a strength melee hero that hunts down his target taking down everything and everyone that stands in his path. His first ability is Obsession, which enables Joshua to select an enemy target to become obsessed with, amplifying the damage he deals to that target but halving the damage he deals to any other target. Great in taking down the enemy carry, but watch out for his teammates! Moving on, Blood Hunt is his next ability, which throws the archbishop's scythe at the enemies, disarming him while damaging and causing the enemies to bleed for a few seconds (just like Bloodseeker's Rupture). His last basic ability is a passive called Immortal Body, which grants Joshua health regeneration as a percentage of his missing health. This ability can also be activated to double the regeneration for a few seconds, but afterwards have it disabled for an even longer duration. Gotta use it carefully! The ultimate ability of the archbishop is Cursed Blood, which bonds Joshua with the last enemy he has attacked, reflecting all the damage received to the hero he has bonded with as pure damage. Ouch, gotta try to dodge that damage! >> View Full Concept Here << lonelyfreak - Khopi, the Doppelganger The community has always been trying to create a hero that shifts its attribute to its advantage. Well, lonelyfreak has done just that with Khopi, a primarily melee intelligence hero that manipulates attributes to make his abilities stronger. Pound of Flesh enables him to sacrifice a portion of his health in order to create a protective barrier that reduces incoming damage and deals damage when broken. When Khopi's primary attribute is strength, the shield's threshold is based on a percentage of his maximum health. The ability that benefits from agility is Cutting Dash, an active ability that enables Khopi to dash forward at twice his movement speed in order to land a cleave attack at the target point or unit. When Khopi's main attribute is agility, the speed, distance and damage are all increased, making him even more agile. His last basic ability is Arcane Touch, which converts his basic attacks to arcane explosions that deal magic damage plus a small damage bonus in a small radius around the primary target. When intelligence is the main attribute, the size of the explosion increases and it also blinds and slows the enemies affected. Now it's time to discover how the attribute shifting actually happens, and that's when his ultimate Attribute Shift comes into play. His ultimate can be used on enemy heroes to match their attribute or can be casted on himself in order to change the attribute in a specific order. Whenever the attribute is switched, it receives a bonus at the cost of the other two attributes. >> View Full Concept Here << cjy101 - Kisayi, the Sea Vengeance We've previously mentioned the lack of ranged strength heroes in DotA, but we're lucky enough to have even more! Kisayi is a versatile hero that's able to deal high amounts of damage while also disabling and incapacitating her enemies. The first ability of her arsenal is Grape Shot, which fires multiple projectiles in a V shape that can pierce creeps but not heroes upon impact. The projectiles deal damage, slow the units hit and can proc attack modifiers. Her next ability is Burning Rage, which lights Kisayi in fire, granting her burning damage around her, bonus attack damage and movement speed. Once the duration is over, she's disarmed for a few seconds. Better keep her under control and run once her rage is on! Moving on to her passive ability, Bete Noire, that strikes fear into the opponents she's fighting, reducing their physical damage output and increasing the mana they're using when casting spells. Yes, it pierces spell immunity. We have all the damage in the world, but now we need something to keep the enemies under control, and her ultimate Chain Shot does just that. Kisayi fires multiple binding chains onto a target area, rooting and damaging any enemy units caught. You can run, but good luck trying! >> View Full Concept Here << glavidus - Glavidus, the Sun's Grip The hero with the same name as his author, Glavidus, is a melee agility hero that makes the player feel truly powerful when playing. His first ability, Scorch Arms, deals minor damage to the target enemy hero while cursing them with Scorched Weapon, a negative buff that deals damage to the affected target whenever it performs a basic attack. His next ability is called Solar Glare, an ability that grants Glavidus unobstructed flying vision, free movement and the Centurion Lance, a weapon that applies the negative buffs that are present on Glavidus to the enemies (maim for instance). This ability could be beneficial to Keeper of the Light and a pain to Night Stalker, since for its duration the time is forced to daytime. Moving on, his passive ability is the nightmare of ranged heroes, because Vantage Point allows Glavidus to freely attack any ranged unit that recently landed an attack on him, all of this with increased accuracy. However, the duration is relatively low and the enemies must be careful when attacking Glavidus, his response will be fierce! And finally, his ultimate Emperor's Will, Glavidus selects an area where enemies caught will be slowed and damaged based on Glavidus' missing health. >> View Full Concept Here <<

How to Claim Your Prizes (It's Pretty Easy, but We Need Some Info From You) Look for our email in your inbox and reply to it with your Steam Profile Link Expect to receive a friend request from our community manager Hades4u, make sure to accept his friend request Once you’ve been added, you’ll receive a direct trade invitation or a trade offer, depending if you’re online on Steam or not at the time of the prizing Enjoy your goodies! Note: Hades4u will be away till the 23rd of August, but have no fear, he will try his best to send you your prize as soon as possible!

We would like to thank everyone for joining our contest and for being awesome! We hope that you enjoyed this contest as much as we did and you can expect more contests of this kind coming soon. Let us know if you have any suggestions or ideas for us to improve the quality of our future contests and of our hero creation tool!

Congrats to all the winners!

With all the entries this contest I can't imagine how hard it must be for the judges to read through all of them. It must've been tough!

Thanks to everyone who involved themselves into my concept! It really means it a lot! (seriously, Fraeshir's Blasted Chainpath wouldn't exist if not for criticisms on the previous ability)

And congratulations to the rest who won and have joined the contest. You guys to made this perhaps the biggest hero-creation contest in Dotafire to date!

Thanks to the judges who went through this incredibly large list of concepts, godspeed to you.

But just want to ask, can we request for possible feedback from the judges like last time? Granted we didn't get much response from them but I think we'd appreciate the option to find out where we went wrong. It's hard to gauge what the requirements are when the majority of the comments left on the winners are just summaries of the heroes and hardly explain why they were chosen.

Congrats to the winners and I guess I'll just try and pull a WK and come back stronger next time hopefully with something people might be more interested in. Also I have to agree that it would be nice to know a little bit about some of the things the judge(s) are looking for, such as whether having art or no art matters, whether its based off a concept that is well received or fills a role in Dota the judges find lacking.

Hey, here's quoting one of the judges' comments he made on Discord:



Cheers!
Sofa

Thanks for the reply. I don't think it clears up my concerns though, as it is still hard to see what is needed.

What makes something considered 'outright failed'?
What would be considered as 'issues'?
How do you define 'quite as good as the others'?

These are the questions I think contestants would like to know. It's hard to work towards something that isn't concrete or objective as 'Quality and Play Style', how do you decide whether a hero has had enough thought and effort put in or what play style a judge prefers to be filled? The category of 'Originality' is a good example of something less subjective. "Has this been done before? If no, good. If yes, less good."

In a for-fun contest I have helped judged before, I gave the criteria of: "Does the hero's abilities compliment each other well and is it cohesive?" That way it is clear what to aim for if you want to win, make your hero's abilities work together and interact with each other. So when I chose the winner and runner ups, it was easy to explain why I did it and possibly easy for contestants to see where they went right and wrong to me. Here however, it is hard to see why he chose these winners as little explanation or reasoning was given. By the subjective metric of 'I felt this was good' with little else, it's not easy to understand the thought process.

For example since this judge liked the play style of Strength ranged heroes, he could have put that up as one of his judging categories so people knew what to aim towards to get his favour. I've suggested this before and I'll suggest it again for the next contest, make the judging rubric more objective and clear to everyone. Of course there will always be bias, but that's why there are multiple judges.

Hey everyone!

For the next hero creation contest we're going to work on making the rules more clear on what the creators should be looking for when creating a hero concept. So far we've used these rules and everything worked out well, but since the new tool and the high number of competitors, I guess we also need to develop our rules!

For feedback on your concepts and any other questions, please feel free to PM me either here on DOTAFire or on Discord (Hades4u#0754).

As mentioned in the post, I am going to be away until the 23rd of August and until then I won't be able to answer questions, but once I'm back I'll be more than happy to answer any questions or concerns that you might have!

Until then, thanks once again for participating and don't give up, there will be more contests in the future and we'll work on making them better for our enthusiastic creators!

Hello one and everyone. Safecyn here.

First off, before I get into the meat of this, I just want to say that anyone who has questions about their heroes and my criteria for judging them is welcome to contact me via the Dotafire Discord. That'd be Safecyn#9520 . I'm a busy guy and I can't guarantee that I can respond to all of you, but I understand there are people who have some questions about the judging process.

That being said, as far as the judging process goes... this contest was not particularly clear. I publicly announced that I was judging and expected some formal update on the site about who would be making the decisions, but when the actual 'judgment day' came, there was nothing to be found. Which was fine. I didn't mind one bit, it took me the better part of a day, but I read through each entry and separated them as best I could manage, and came up with a solid list of contenders. I submitted this as my judgment and went to sleep, basically.

I looked at the contest results the next day and got a shock. Not a single one of the heroes that I had chosen to receive an Arcana received one. Neither was the alternate I suggested in case some other judge who I didn't know about disagreed. As a matter of fact, none of the heroes that I, the only publicly announced judge, selected to receive an arcana or suggested as an alternate received ANY prize, whatsoever. On top of this, some heroes that I didn't even pass into alternates for the treasures ended up receiving treasures.

To the three current arcana winners: this is not a post trying to discredit your entries. They're all incredibly good and I scored them among the top competitors. This is more to shed some light on what occurred behind the scenes. My judgment was overruled by the one other, unannounced person who judged the contest. I won't give that name out, since that's not how Safecyn do. But I have confirmed that there was only ONE other judge to this contest, and rather than discuss the winners or select a few from both selection pools... my entries were completely tossed out without any attempt made to contact or consult me.

On principle, I can't really support that kind of judging environment, particularly in a situation where actual prizes are on the line. So I have to formally state that I'm bowing out from judging any competition like this in the future. This is unfortunate, since I enjoy doing this a lot, and in past competitions it's been fun to discuss all these unique ideas among friends and fellow judges. But if this is the environment that the staff is going to support, I'm not going to be a part of it.

But hey. I'm not known for being a serious guy. And I wouldn't want to end this post on a negative note. So instead, I'd like to share the 3 concepts I selected to receive an arcana, as well as the alternate, and explain my reasoning for selecting these heroes.

Rank #1: https://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/concept/krampus-187

Krampus the Wendigo got near perfect marks in every category from me. As far as originality is concerned, he has a unique disabling mechanic by turning an area of the map 'slippery' like in the Greeviling, making the enemy decide to either slide across recklessly and hope they don't smash into something, or slow down and potentially be caught under one of his falling icicles from his Hail ability. Blizzard is also a cool ultimate that pushes heroes and slows them, while having an actual drawback in his decreased turn rate, allowing the enemy to counterplay and juke him.

As far as play style was concerned, he sounds like an absolute blast to play, having fun abilities that cause havoc on the field and knock people around. But what makes the hero feel very much like a Dota hero to me is how his abilities can be used to completely screw himself and his team over. Icicles blocking paths to pursue enemies, exploding gift boxes knocking enemies out of range of a diasable: yes. YES. This is a hero that could show up on both Fails of the Week AND Top Plays, assuming that show still existed. The thought and quality behind the hero can be seen in this as well, as not every single ability feeds perfectly into every other, and some abilities, like his Giftboxes, are only cast directly behind him, making them difficult to pull off. All in all, a great hero concept.

Rank #2: https://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/concept/ethrazai-419

What really got me about Ethrazai was how much thought was clearly put into the ability design. I saw a LOT of heroes with summons in this contest, some that were entirely BASED on summoning. But Volc99 stuck out to me when he took the time to give gold and experience bounties to the enemy team for killing his summons. The only possible attention to detail he got wrong was having the summoned owl have less vision during the night than during the day. Like c'mon.

As far as originality was concerned, I thought Extraction was an extraordinarily unique ability that did something few other heroes can do in the game: punish an enemy hero that's TPing out in front of you. Casting this ability before an enemy hero gets away gives you a chance to deal one last chunk of damage to kill them in the fountain. The numbers probably need to be tweaked a bit. Maybe it needs a projectile instead of an instant cast point. But this is the kind of ability I could see introduce on a new hero, then tweaked once it was in game. Points also go to Violent Fungus, which slows better on the edge than in the middle, where the enemy will want to go in order to kill it and reap that GOLD AND XP BOUNTY. Hot damn that attention to detail is good.

Rank #3: https://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/concept/alissa-349

This is the left field choice, for sure. The presentation is a bit lacking compared to the others, but the unique hook of the hero is enough to get me interested: she does zero damage. None. Instead, she has four abilities that seemed to belong in Dota more than a vast majority of the competitors... specifically because of how you can be either Gosu or Garbage with the hero depending on your ability usage.

Maybe you use Cryogenize at the right time, you save an ally with the shallow-grave-esque effect, and you set up a group stun on the enemy team that gives you a beautiful combo. Or maybe you use it on the enemy as he's about to get hit with Laguna Blade and lose the teamfight for your team instantly. Maybe the knockback from Purifying Wins sets up an epic save, maybe it bumps the enemy off the cliff and they get away scott free. These abilities seemed like things Icefrog himself would give a hero, which is why I ranked it so high. The ulti seeming too similar to CMs was perhaps the only mark against it.

Runner Up: https://www.dotafire.com/dota-2/concept/puddle-spirit-362

You know, I look back at this and I'm like... I really didn't give Puddle Spirit an Arcana? But I really didn't give Puddle Spirit an Arcana.

I can't really say why. The amount of effort put into the submission easily gave it top marks in the quality category, and this hero even as a similar hook to Alissa in that she's a dedicated support with no damaging abilities whatsoever. (Though Puddle Spirit gets damage as a level 20 talent, and even more with an Aghanim's... not that she'd ever be able to farm one.)

Water Remnant is a unique, powerful, and hilarious passive to give a hero, even if it's a bit on the random side, and while I originally thought that Hydrate was 'Lion Suck, but better', the duration of it changed my mind. I guess at the end of the day it was Spirit's Blessing that made me mark it lower. While it's unique and goes with her kit, and has interesting properties like buffing mek heal, urn heal, or even a salve heal you slap on someone or yourself, it's a little dry. Ironic considering the hero it's attached to!

Turning into a puddle and intentionally running through enemies though. Gah that's good. Friggin' A.

Anyways. I don't know if this post is going to come off as petty or rambling at all, but I wanted to address this. Let people see into how the contest was run, and what one of your judges actually decided on, and why he chose what he chose. I could stop there, but I want to do one other thing: something positive that I think makes this whole post justified.

I don't have the site's money backing me on this, but Arcanas aren't THAT expensive. Since I feel like there was some.. not fishiness, but dishonesty? in the judging process? I'd like to extend an offer to ringnir, Volc99, LagMachine, and dedessert. Yes, all four of you. Get in touch with me over either Dotafire chat or the discord (we could really use more regulars on the discord, hint hint), and I will personally fund the Arcana of your choice for each of you. I can't guarantee it'll be right away, but we'll make it happen. This is the best way I can think of to resolve this whole thing, since demanding a recount is... you know. That's touchy in my country.

Anyways. So that's a thing I just did.

Safecyn, signing off.

Hey Safecyn, thanks for taking the time to write this. It sounds like we have some things to improve for future contests like this and I definitely get why you're upset about the way the end of the contest was handled.

I don't know all the details of what went on so I think it's best if Hades talks to you himself. However, he's gone until August 23 so it'll take him some time to get to this. Sorry that it'll take a while for this to happen but we'll make sure your concerns are addressed.