Hero: Ardevail the Blade Mage

So this is my first thread (I plan on making hero Guides soon,) but an idea popped into mind of a really cool new hero idea. I know, I know, everyone has their own cool ideas, but hey. Nothing wrong in sharing.

Ardevail the Blade Mage, or just "Blade Mage" is a semi-carry, durable strength-based hero with a heavy focus on casting. He has massive potential for snowballing, hard, but can be countered pretty easily. But I'll move on to explaining his abilities.


His Q is an ability called "Blade Wall." This ability summons a collection of six swords that orbit around the hero. Every time an enemy hero directly attacks the Blade Mage (as in auto attack,) a sword leaves the hero and chases after the enemy who attacked you. The swords are a flying projectile with 250 health and can be killed (think Gyrocopter's Homing Missle.) When the sword reaches its target, it does (at level 1) 50 damage and ministuns, as well as providing true sight of the hero for 3 seconds. Magic immune enemies are still hit, but are not ministuned, and do not provide true sight on strike.

Damage: 50/75/100/150
Buff Duration: 10/15/20/25
Cooldown: 45/40/35/30
Mana Cost: 175/200/225/250

Ardevail's Master taught him his skills by demonstration, resulting in many of the Blade Mage's scars.


Moving on, the Blade Mage's W ability is called "Whirling Cleave." This spell is an instant cast spell, which, when used, creates a giant spinning blade that rotates around Ardevail and has a 250 radius range. The ability does a starting damage of 20 per second that an enemy is caught in the blade, as well as a strike damage of 50 and any enemies hit by the spell are dragged along with the blade's path (note, they can still move, they are simply pushed along with the sword,) further increasing the damage done. Magic Immune enemies are not caught in the blade's path. Invisible enemies are not caught in the blade's path, but still take damage for every second they remain by the sword.

Rotations: 1/2/3/3
Strike Damage: 50/100/150/200
Damage per Second: 20/60/100/100
Cooldown: 25
Mana Cost: 150/200/250/300

Ardevail's broken sword springs to life once again as it is called to bring death on his foes.

The Blade Mage's E is a passive ability named "Blood Hast been Drawn." Similar to the passive ability of Pudge, this ability can gain charges even before points are put into it, but do not offer the effect. For every enemy hero that dies in a 600 Radius around the Blade Mage, Ardevail gains a permanent boost to his strength and intelligence.

Strength Gain per Hero: 1/2/3/4
Intelligence Gain per Hero/1/3/5/6

The death of his Master brought upon the Blade Mage a grim determination to bring ruthless justice to those who have wronged him and his allies. When Blood is drawn, nothing can stop Ardevail from fulfilling his destiny.


The Blade Mage's ultimate is a powerful spell titled "Strike Asunder." It is a targeted spell, which upon cast, Ardevail leaps into the air and strikes the ground, planting a large sword in the ground. Any enemy in a 700 radius is stunned for (at first) 1 second, but the strike does not do any initial damage. After the strike, Ardevail stays by the blade and, in a 4 second channel, begins to summon blades and throw them at any hero in a 700 radius. The blades do 250 damage on hit, and slow the target 20%. The Blade Mage throws waves of swords at intervals, which originally start at one wave per second. Ardevail is immune while leaping, and can be interrupted with stuns or silences during the channeled ability.

Can be upgraded by Aghanims's Scepter

Stun Duration: 1/1.50/2
Blade Damage: 250/350/400
Throw Interval: 1/.95/.75
Cooldown: 135/115/85
Mana Cost: 200/400/550

Scepter Upgrade:
Increases stun duration, throw intervals, and reduces cooldown. Also, adds an area damage in a 700 radius at the leap strike point.

Stun Duration: 1.50/2/3
Throw Intervals: .95/.75/.50
Cooldown: 100/85/65
Area Damage: 2% of the enemy's current health.

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Ardevail's hero model is a man clad in shining white steel armor, adorned with a horned helmet that only shows his eyes. He wields a long thin, plain sword, and levitates a foot off the ground with a blue glow coming from his boots.


The Blade Mage can get out of hand quickly, but he is handicapped by his high cooldown, high mana cost abilities, especially since his strength gain is much higher than his intelligence gain. His melee base attack is also weak and slow, meaning he relies on his abilities to do damage. His strength gain is higher than his intelligence gain, which is higher than his agility gain. His base intelligence is low, meaning he has little mana and little mana regen, giving him a dependance on int based items.

A few strategies with the hero that would work well:
The Blade Mage works very well with Keeper of the Light, his mana restore allowing him to spam his high-damage spells.
A Blade Mail item would work very well with Blade Wall, increasing the damage return.
A Scepter + Refresher Orb combo would allow him to spam his ultimate, but would take a vast pool of mana to use.
A Bloodstone could grant him high mana regen, and would stack well with his passive.

A few strategies that would work well against him:
Any mana burn ability or attack would devastate his damage output, meaning heroes like Nyx and Anti Mage would have a field day with him.
Diffusal Blade could drain his mana well, especially on a hero like Phantom Lancer.
Blade Wall only works on direct attacks, so the simple solution is to just ignore him, or dispel the buff.
Getting early kills on the Blade Mage can limit his potential to snowball with his passive, effectively halving his potential.

Well, that was wordy. Thanks for reading though!

Wow... I love this hero idea, but I need to know his base stats before making any opinion on balance. I think

The intelligence gain is too high for this,even with the lowest intelligence possible you could give him(lower than skeleton kings,but then he couldn't cast anything,as he depends on his spells).

So,nerf the intelligence gain on E.

Yeah I was worried about the passive int gain. What do you suggest on that? Also, about the base stats, I'm not entirely sure how that works.

One question: does the Blade Mage gain stats from his E if his allies kill enemy heroes when he's around (just like Pudge's Flesh Heap)? If so, I think the Strength gain of his E is bit too high (4 Strength might sound little on paper, but it really is very high). Maybe 1/1.5/2/2.5 Strength is good enough. Also, regarding his other skills, I think their manacosts are too high. I think a 175 manacost on his Q and W are high enough. Or maybe you could reduce their cooldowns to around 20 seconds. His ultimate is OK, I guess.

Also, it would help to determine the balance of this Hero if you showed his stats, base damage, armor and movement speed.