Gazaa, The Contagion

Gazaa, The Contagion

Dire Strength
"Your demise shall be slow and painful."

Base health

: 587

Base mana

: 247

Base damage

: 57

Base armor

: 4

Movement speed

: 300

Attacks per second

: 0.67

Base attack time

: 1.7

Cast time

: 0.2 +0.5

Range

: Melee

Vision range

: 1800/800

Strength

: 83 (23 +2.5)

Agility

: 39 (14 +1)

Intelligence

: 79 (19 +2.5)




Lore:
"Ugh... Help me," a sickly voice whispered from within a run-down cottage. Like all victims of the plague, Gazaa was weak and bedridden, unable to perform any action on his own. He was tended to by many servants, but day after day each caught the disease one by one. Eventually, his servants succumbed to the illness, their corpses indiscriminately tossed into a pit containing the rotting remains of the infected. That left Gazaa alone. Weak, tired, dehydrated and alone.
One day, a weekly corpse cleanup was conducted in the area. As the crew entered the particularly tattered house, they found the lifeless body of Gazaa, strewn motionless on his bed. The crew threw Gazaa into an oxcart which contained other dead victims, all of which died through the same cause. They emptied the full oxcart into the pit, sending Gazaa falling and then tumbling down a hill of corpses. However, Gazaa was not dead as presumed, but he was too weak to speak out against his disposal. With no will to live any longer, he quietly awaited his death.
Soon after Gazaa shut his eyes, a green, sickly man stepped pass him. "Hmph... They grow more resistant each time..." He said, somewhat displeased. As he took in a waft of he decaying air, he choked on something... Living. "So its you!" The bitter man exclaimed, wrapping the edge of his scythe around Gazaa's neck. "I'm going to!..." He took a step back for a few seconds, and resumed the conversation, this time with a crooked smile on his face. "I, the Necrolyte, am going to let you live for eternity. However, in return you must spread the plague, spread it to the ends of the earth for the rest of your life, and leave no survivors." At this point, Gazaa was reluctant to undergo this process, but was once again too weak to speak out. The man waved his scythe in the air and whispered an incantation, then plunged the blade into Gazaa's beating heart. In an instant, the disease mutated, fusing with Gazaa, changing him into a monster. The plague took control of his mind, manipulating his every movement to suit the will of the Necrolyte. There and then, Gazaa the Contagion was born.




Q: Plague
Type: Target-Unit
Affects: Enemies
Damage: Magical
Infects the target with deadly pathogens, causing it to take slight damage over a long duration. Each time this skill is cast on an enemy, the duration is refreshed and a stacking slow will be added.
- 700 cast range
- 15/20/25/30 damage per second
- 7% stacking slow
- 15 second duration
- 100 mana cost
- 6 second cooldown

Unlike Gazaa, most enemies cannot withstand the debilitating disease.





W: Festering Wounds
Type: Target-Unit
Affects: Enemies
Damage: Magical
Creates infections on the target's open wounds, causing it to take damage over time based on the amount of health lost. The target emits a toxic gas during this process, causing nearby enemies to take the same amount of damage as well.
- 400 cast range
- 5% lost health as damage per second
- 4/5/6/7 second duration
- 200/250/300/350 toxic cloud radius
- 90 mana cost
- 15 second cooldown

Injuries never heal in the presence of the Contagion.





E: Infectious Touch
Type: Passive
Affects: Self
When an enemy unit attacks the Contagion in melee range, there is a chance that it will be afflicted with the same level of Plague. Also increases the Contagion's health and mana regeneration for every unit affected by the Plague.
- 10/20/30/40% passive chance for attackers to catch the Plague
- +1/2/3/4 health per second for every enemy with Plague
- +0.5/1/1.5/2 mana per second for every enemy with Plague

Hand-to-hand combat only serves as a vector of infection, further feeding his power.





R: Deadly Mutation
Type: Toggle
Affects: Enemies
When toggled on, the Contagion strengthens his disease, causing Plague and Festering Wounds to have increased effects, at the cost of mana per second. When toggled off, the increased effects are removed.
- 30/50/70 mana per second



Gazaa's illness transforms him into a creature with great power, while destroying the bodies of those with lesser immunity.





Deadly Mutation is a bit imbalanced lategame, in my opinion. If you have any suggestions, do post it here :)



Balance Changelog

Err... So when your Deadly Mutation is on, and you use your first skill , they take 171 damage per second for 15 seconds? Cause that would be 2565 damage. Soooooooo...

It would do a lot of damage, but it would also consume 1050 mana in 15 seconds. This hero only has 897 mana at level 25 (without intelligence items), and even with Arcane Boots, he would only have barely enough mana to cast Plague and keep up 15 seconds of Deadly Mutation. Although this hero has Infectious Touch to regenerate his mana, he would also need to spend some mana using his other skills during fights. Still, when given enough mana, he can deal a lot of damage, but not all at once, so his opponents still have a chance against him.

Basically, I want this hero to be one that requires good mana control, so that you will get more bang for your buck.

I really like the general hero's concept, it looks more attracting than the other suggestions atm. maybe some small balances are still needed, but generally fine :).

I like the idea. With a few clarities and maxing plague early you could put out some crazy harass.

If we change Plague's cooldown to 8 seconds and increase mana cost to 110, how about units that are infected cannot regenerate health for the duration, like Frostbitten enemies from AA's ultimate. I can see the plague being too easily countered by regen until is a barely noticable amount of damage, such as lvl 4 Plague being reduced to lvl 1 damage-wise. Then again, maybe that is what the ulti is for, bursts of lethal damage.

I am comparing it to Venomancer's passive - 20 damage for 15 seconds. And that is a passive that refreshes on every attack. So if the plague stops natural regen (direct healing spells, such as Mekansm and Hand of God still work) it will actually make the skill worthwhile having a mana cost and cooldown. Enemies can't just use a tango to escape the plague...

Plague is one of those spells that is really hard to balance, and I think that strengthening it while increasing the mana cost is a good choice. However, I think that it's easier to strengthen the spell by increasing its damage dealt instead of just blocking regeneration, or it will be too easy to get and enemy low using 1 stack of Plague (note that it deals 105 damage at level 1 and 450 damage at level 4 for 70 mana cost, so negating regeneration is already stretching he limits). I will increase the damage to 15/20/25/30, negating the regeneration from a tango early game and also making it scale slightly better, and the new mana cost should be 90 or 100 so as to require some Soul Ring or Clarity spam early to balance it out.




EDIT:
Also increasing his intelligence gain to 2.5 and decreasing his strength gain to 2.5. I believe that choices between strength and intelligence items should be made :)

imo the best of the 4 hero concepts you got

Nah, Ziklash the Dimension Eater is the coolest thing ever.
When i get my graphics tablet, which is soon as it's Christmas :D, Im going to start designing and drawing concept arts of Ziklash.

So btw porygon, more specifically what did you have in mind? I have a black shadowy moth with effects similar to Shadow Fiend, but with a flying animation much like Visage, and roughly the size of Weaver. I want to clear some things up - what sort of head does the moth have? Compared to real life equivalent insects? Same with mandibles

It's an honor that you would draw that for me. My drawing skills are quite mediocre, so I can only imagine the heroes that I make up :P


Ok, the basic profile of the hero is very close to what I have in mind, but the wings are slightly smaller and more active than Visage's wings, but flies very smoothly. Though I like the idea of adding particle effects to the hero, try not to overdo it. Make him have defined insectoid features like the rest of his bug brethren.
For his head, make it like a moth's head, but instead of large compound eyes, give it a pair of medium-sized triangle-shaped eyes with no pupil, and instead of a proboscis, give it some large, gnashing mandibles. Make sure the antennae stand out with some effects or something, but don't make it too big.
Ziklash's thorax should be hairy, and has wings similar to that of the common moth you find in your home. He has 6 legs, with the front pair having 4 claws and are capable of grasping objects, while the other legs have 2 claws at the end of them.
Nothing special about the abdomen.



Once again, thanks for doing this :)