Cosmic Crawler by Cuttleboss

Cosmic Crawler is a unique and unconventional hard carry that is meant to win teamfights with a combination of magical dps, a spell AOE attack modifier, and nuke spamming while relying on a global mobility spell to farm and fight. Playing against it is made to be playing against the clock in a more literal way than most hard carries. It's skills are all built to turn a close or losing game in its favor. The hero is not optimal for ganking due to heavy item dependence (and lack of mobility-based crowd control) but can join fights with Arrival.

CC is an insane AOE presence, and every one of its skills scale into the late game. Both Dimensional Rip and Cosmic Bind offer excellent turtle and teamfight power, and the nukes grow stronger as the game goes longer while Arrival deals percentage damage and makes the debuffs undispellable. Spirit Touch gives it an edge in long battles due to mana burn leaving enemy heroes powerless. Crawler is not made to man-fight due to its relatively slow auto-attack. It prefers to weave around combat with high movement speed, dealing massive damage to many foes with each damaging spell. The combo of Crawler is to use Arrival and Rip to lower their health, then use Cosmic Bind to apply the constant debuff and attack with Spirit Touch the entire time until the targets are dead. It is all about getting enemy's health down quickly, ideally before they are healed back.

Uniquely for a Carry hero, Cosmic Crawler has to play around enemy Black King Bars instead of fighting through them like most carries. Crawler is heavily weakened and countered when enemies get their BKBs, then regains power late game as those BKB durations go down and Crawler's damage and general survivability goes up. Despite this, it is much safer to draft Cosmic Crawler with some physical damage dealers to make up for it's deficiencies.

Crawler is imagined as a hypercarry who goes to the safelane and spends most of the game farming, but because of Spirit Touch's mana burn and high armor and regeneration, it may be possible to run it mid depending on the matchup if Crawler can outtrade it's enemy, like running a Medusa mid. This is of course very risky, much like a Medusa mid. If you are feeling crazy, it is theoretically possible to run this hero as the world's greediest support and only use the debuffs to terrorize the enemy team until the Arrival passive inevitably makes you strong (which is very possible in a pub game). In terms of drafting and gameplay, Crawler would be most like Spectre in terms of global mobility and slow activation, but plays a little more like Necrophos or Leshrac, without the high potential or reliance on snowballing.

It's gameplay leans towards passiveness and low activity. Crawler has all offensive spells with no in-battle mobility or durability and the spells do very little damage until Crawler has farmed up at least a few thousand gold of net worth. This means there is little potential for snowballing and all you can usually do is farm. It is the hero that looks to farm up some items until it is ready to face off against the enemy team and use the spells to defend towers if it comes to it. It will take it some time to activate due to bad stats and gain.
It's itemization favors big stat items because they boost the damage of Crawler's spells and attack modifiers because Spirit Touch + Cosmic Bind allows Crawler to instant-attack multiple enemies. There is also a strong case to be made for Heal reduction due to how Arrival works, it will severely reduce the heal-back at the end of the duration (which you can get with Aghanim's Shard). Eye of Skadi fits all three and makes it an ideal item to buy at some point.
These specializations dissuade it from low or non attribute items such as Moon Shard, Radiance, or Assault Cuirass.

Due to their crowd control and damage however, it is possible to itemize it for earlier game because of it's ability to disrupt enemies with debuffs and deal some damage if it has enough INT early on. Crawler's itemization would also likely depend on which attribute you would value the most based on which allies and enemies you have. If you want more Damage over Time and a frontline Crawler, get more strength items, if you want a stronger nuker that stays back, get more intelligence items. Agility focused builds are mostly impractical due to Spirit Touch cooldown and 2.1 BAT (and Spirit Touch being the spell that does the least damage by a pretty wide margin), so Agility is more of an afterthought or bonus rather than something to build around, unless you want to dedicate yourself to burning mana.

Cosmic Crawler is a difficult hero and requires a lot of practice to play well due to the difficulty of using Arrival, Rip and Bind properly and selecting the best debuffs every moment requires a lot of game knowledge. The hero also requires excellent farming skills to win and deal with the late game situations that the hero excels in and the struggle of the hero's extremely vulnerable early game. The hero can be easy to chain feed with and thus it takes much effort and focus to play the hero properly. Crawler has a medium skill floor and a high skill ceiling.

General Stat Priorities:
High Priority: INT, STR, Mana Regen, Movespeed, Cast Range, Spell Amplification, Spell Lifesteal
Middle Priority: Magic Resistance, Status Resistance, AGI, Cooldown Reduction, Armor, Spell Immunity, Attack Damage, HP Regen, Mobility, Lifesteal, Evasion, Attack Range
Low Priority: Mana, HP, Attack Speed

Early Options:
Magic Wand, Wind Lace, Ring of Regen, Null Talisman, Bracer, Void Stone, Crown, Ring of Health, Fluffy Hat, Voodoo Mask, Falcon Blade, Soul Ring

Early Builds:
Early Activating Caster: Arcane Boots or Power Treads Int> Eul's Scepter of Divinity> Kaya> Force Staff/ Blink Dagger>Any Kaya Upgrade> and then into late game items.
Early Activating Tanky: Power Treads Str> Kaya and Sange> Black King Bar>and then into late game items

Late Game Carry Builds:
Well Rounded / Both Stats: Arcane Boots or Power Treads Int> Eul's Scepter of Divinity> Eye of Skadi>> Wind Waker> Scythe of Vyse> Heart of Tarrasque> Octarine Core/ Manta Style/ Gleipnir
Tanky / DPS / Str Focused: Arcane Boots> Bloodstone> Eye of Skadi> Heart of Tarrasque> Shiva's Guard> Overwhelming Blink
Burst / Nuker / Int Focused: Power Treads Int> Dagon 1> Ethereal Blade> Dagon 5> Arcane Blink> Scythe of Vyse/ Wind Waker> Eye of Skadi/ Shiva's Guard/ Octarine Core/ Revenants Brooch
Long Ranged High Mana Regen Caster / Int Focused: Arcane Boots>Disassemble Arcanes into Aether Lens> Power Treads Int> Scythe of Vyse> Ethereal Blade>> Octarine Core> Arcane Blink> Wind Waker/ Eye of Skadi/ Revenants Brooch

Strange/Goofy Builds:
Pusher Treant Style Build: Arcane Boots> Meteor Hammer> Aghanim's Scepter>then whatever you want or need for your team
Anti-Mage Build: Power Treads AGI> Mage Slayer> Diffusal Blade> Yasha and Kaya>then normal late game items
Anti-Regen/Heal Build: Boots of Choice> Spirit Vessel> Aghanim's Shard> Eye of Skadi> Shiva's Guard

Item Discussion:
Eye of Skadi is one of Crawler's best items not just due to the massive raw stats, but also because Spirit Touch can attack every target in the Cosmic Bind AOE to Skadi the whole enemy team. The Heal reduction also helps with Arrival, since it limits how much the enemies can heal back at the end of the debuff duration.
Bloodstone is good for the spell lifesteal and active which gives Crawler a massive amount of survivability and a powerful scaling heal and mana restoration tool into late game. Unforunately it does not offer any direct damage boost on its own.
Kaya and Sange is useful because it can boost mana regeneration and increases spell damage. The Status resist is also useful because it can make Crawler less vulnerable to chain disables. Useful for generally making Crawler stronger while not specializing in a benefit.
Yasha and Kaya makes Crawler extremely fast with the percentage movespeed which scales well with the flat movespeed of Arrival's passive.
Eternal Shroud an inexpensive defensive and spell lifesteal item, though it does not boost damage of any spells. Helps with being blown up by spells in the early game.
Octarine Core is a good caster item for this hero enabling it to cast more spells from farther away, but unfortunately does not add any attributes, it would be better later in the game when buying attributes for the damage is not as much of a factor. The reduction in the cooldowns of Dimensional Rip and Spirit Touch also boost Crawler's total damage output a lot.
Scythe of Vyse boosts a lot of intelligence, and the synergy with Arrival is that its hex cannot be removed if Crawler casts it. A powerful item late game and extra good on Crawler. It can be bought as a first major item as well because of its high mana regeneration and boost to Dimensional Shift's damage.
Shiva's Guard is a potentially good choice due to providing a huge amount of armor and reducing healing, which weakens Arrival's reversal heal at the end of its duration if the enemies have a chance of living that long. It also provides a huge amount of intelligence and the AOE slow can be very synergistic with Cosmic Bind.
Rod of Atos / Gleipnir Atos is a powerful item for Crawler early, as it helps the hero with the lack of control and the stats are good. Gleipnir also gives useful stats and a strong AOE nuke root which stacks well with other Crawler debuffs.
Ethereal Blade amplifies almost all damage that Crawler does and provides a powerful disable or effective protection from physical damage depending on the draft. It would also be immune to being dispelled by Arrival if Crawler's target has the debuff (except by Spell Immunity). An excellent item all around and most late game oriented Kaya Upgrade.
Dagon 1 to Dagon 5 allows for some nice additional burst and the stats are also pretty good on Crawler. A useful option of the team really does require more burst late game. Pairs well with Eblade.

Abnormal Items:
Daedalus as crits proc on the Spirit Touch's instant attacks, this item is potentially an effective way to deal tons of damage to multiple foes. Not that reliable and the stats are mostly wasted otherwise, as Crawler does not have the attack speed to use it without the AOE attack.
Satanic is potentially good for synergy with Spirit Touch (with Cosmic Bind), which lets Crawler steal life from multiple foes and heal back huge amounts of health and the dispel is nice for silences.
Meteor Hammer the stats and buildup are nice and active makes Crawler a threat to towers and can synergize if Crawler gets Aghs Scepter to get AOE Leash. It will definitely feel like playing a discount version of a good Hammer hero ( Treant Protector in this case) until Crawler naturally activates later in the game.
Mage Slayer / Bloodthorn: With Spirit Touch, Crawler can apply the Mage Slayer debuff to multiple foes. The stats are not bad either. Potentially useful against casters but not a great farming item. It can be upgraded to Bloodthorn, though the item's stats are not a great fit for Crawler, though not too bad if enemies are reliant on spell damage.
Diffusal Blade: Useful for additional mana burn that stacks with Spirit Touch and Inflation. Crawler can also target multiple foes with Bind+Touch. The active inhibit may give a powerful disable for a low cost. Useful against certain foes that are extra weak to mana burn like Bristleback and Medusa.
Spirit Vessel is potentially useful even if the stats are not. The damage over time can potentially burst down key targets and the heal reduction works well with Arrival.

Other Useful Items:
Hand of Midas despite attack speed being the least valuable stat on Crawler, the gold and exp benefits down the line this item offers are actually quite tempting, since this hero does not naturally activate quickly and Midas may actually not delay the hero from activating at all as opposed to almost all other heroes.
Boots of Travel comes up as a natural upgrade to boots, especially after disassembling Arcanes. The extra speed is useful on this hero and the global mobility is very good combined with Arrival, which would boost Crawler to near omnipresence on the map.
Aghanim's Scepter massively expands Crawler's control and disruptiveness by improving the quality of the debuffs, especially the ones that counter carries. Nice if you have extra money late game or in certain matchups where you need higher quality debuffs (like Leash against Mobile heroes or Disarm against a team of right clickers), though it may be better to acquire it from Roshan.
Aghanim's Shard allows Crawler to prevent enemies from healing back much health with Arrival. It is a good pickup to counter regen or heal based opponents in general too.
Black King Bar is good if you need the protection it offers, often a decently high priority item because Crawler can be easily shut down by silences or nukes and like most carries would be a top priority target.
Force Staff] / Hurricane Pike fits into any build as the stats are useful and the push active helps with kiting and staying alive if enemies jump on you.
Eul's Scepter of Divinity / Wind Waker, Manta Style, Lotus Orb, to dispel self if needed. Usually for silences and annoying debuffs. Eul's is extra nice because it grants some invulnerability while allowing Crawler's spells to deal damage on their own and it's upgrade Wind Waker is nice for its stat bonus and ability to bail Crawler out of danger.
Witch Blade / Revenants Brooch: These two items are not a natural fit on Crawler since it is not a real right clicker and has no real issue dealing with evasion and ethereal. But there is a lot of value to the Witch Blade passive's slow and damage as Crawler's INT gets high and the amount of INT points Brooch adds for one slot. Brooch also offers True Strike and can apply to multiple enemies at once with Spirit Touch (though will use up all 5 attacks very quickly).
Blink Dagger can be useful to help Crawler actually chase down and finish off more mobile heroes. Arcane Blink is a powerful Blink upgrade, it grants intelligence and allows Crawler to cast its spells with extra long debuff duration, offering powerful synergy with Arrival. Crawler's fast cast time doesn't allow it to take advantage of the cast point improvement however. Overwhelming Blink is another Blink upgrade for more tanky Crawlers. It allows Crawler to output a large amount of damage and control when it jumps into combat. Don't touch Swift Blink on Crawler.

Neutral Items:
Level 1: Arcane Ring*, Pig Pole*, Occult Bracelet*, Fairy's Trinket*, Possessed Mask, Tumbler's Toy, Seeds of Serenity, Lance of Pursuit
Level 2: Pupil's Gift**, Eye of the Vizier*, Nether Shawl* Vambrace*, Grove Bow, Bullwhip, Specialist's Array
Level 3: Psychic Headband**, Elven Tunic, Paladin Sword, Titan Sliver, Quickening Charm , Ogre Seal Totem
Level 4: Timeless Relic**, Spell Prism*, Trickster Cloak*, Stormcrafter, Flicker, Ascetic's Cap, Havoc Hammer
Level 5: Apex**, Fallen Sky**, Giant's Ring*, Book of the Dead*, Seer Stone*, Force Boots, Book Of Shadows
*Denotes an extra useful neutral item
**Denotes an exceptional neutral item

Cosmic Crawler has a relatively flexible skill build. Some of the skills can take priority depending on the nature of the game and the build you are going for.

Cosmic Bind is often the best spell to max out because it is Crawler's best farming spell due to damaging the most creeps for the least mana. It also is useful for defending tier 1 towers if enemies put pressure early.

Spirit Touch is usually maxed second as a carry. Though not as good for farming as Cosmic Bind, Spirit Touch is an excellent laning spell due to the orb walking, low mana cost, and mana burn which neutralizes many lane opponents. Spirit Touch is a lot better if Crawler is laning against one enemy. This is the spell to max first in a solo vs solo lane.

Good as a value point (due to its massively increasing mana cost and getting most of its damage at the first level), Dimensional Rip is useful for quickly applying a debuff (which early game would probably be Slow to try to go for kills, Blind to try to make enemies miss last hits, or Destabilize to farm creep stacks that would normally have Cloak Aura). This spell is usually best to max last.

Arrival is always taken whenever possible. All your useful quirks as Crawler come from this spell and the mana regen makes it easier for Crawler to spam its spells. The active also frees up farming since Crawler can easily jump to farming spots, fountain, or fights if need be (though jumping into fights will expose it to counterinitiation).

Attribute Bonus: Cosmic Crawler may benefit from some bonus early game stats. It has a big problem with fragility early game and the mana cost of each of it's spells grow at a high rate. If the player wants to dump all their stats into Strength, the player can choose to neglect their other skills and go for points into Cosmic Bind and Stats. If the player wants to dump all their stats into Intelligence they can go for Dimensional Rip and Stats. This works best with good support that will stop you from being punished for making such a greedy decision, like with many farm-based carries.


Talent Choices:

Level 10: Dimensional Rip AOE vs Damage. A bigger Dimensional Rip AOE can be very powerful later in the game, since the spell will potentially be able to hit more enemies and more of a creep wave, and the bigger AOE has more synergy with the level 25 Dimensional Rip talent, which makes the Pull about 30% more effective. The Damage is useful even though Crawler has 2.1 BAT because it adds the attack to all Spirit Touch targets which itself can be a big farm booster if the Crawler player is using Cosmic Bind more.

Level 15: Dimensional Rip Cast Range vs Cosmic Bind Debuff Armor. Two very different paths, either Cast Range to allow for safer casting of your nuke from the backline, as well as more synergy with the level 25 talent that allows Crawler to pull enemies in certain directions. The armor for each Cosmic Bind debuff to become very durable based on the number of enemies affected, and it synergizes very well with the level 20 debuff activation threshold talent, since it will allow easier access to those debuffs, which will translate to more armor. This talent depends if you want a caster or tank Crawler.

Level 20: Cosmic Bind debuff activation threshold vs 1/2 Spirit Touch cooldown. The Cosmic Bind talent makes it much easier to threaten the enemy team with the debuffs as it puts it on them when they are below half health. The Spirit Touch cooldown is powerful for more mana burn and sustained damage to multiple enemies. It depends if you need damage/manaburn or if you need the easier access to the debuffs more. The Cosmic Bind talent is much stronger if you have Aghanim's Scepter.

Level 25: Arrival Debuff Duration vs Dimensional Rip Pulls for 3 seconds. Arrival's debuff delay is useful because it slow the enemies healing back their lost health, giving you more time to burst down the enemy heroes. Additional time for undispellable debuffs can also be useful for enemies that are relying a lot on dispels and escape spells. It is overall very useful if fights are going on too long after Arrival is cast and you need more duration. Dimensional Rip with the pull becomes a very strong kiting and mobility control spell on a very low cooldown, especially combined with Aghanim's Scepter's Leash and slow. This talent can make it nigh impossible to escape from Cosmic Bind once a player falls below the health threshold. The Rip talent is also much stronger if the player chose the other two Dimensional Rip talents.

Ideal Allies:

Turtle Heroes:
Heroes that can stall out the game and defend high ground easily can help get to a decently strong point with Arrival's passive. Keeper is also an extremely good ally in general for Crawler, which we will detail in this section.

Nuke Boosters:
The Crawler's nukes become extremely strong late game but magic or spell boosting abilities can boost them to absurd levels. Keeper once again is a good pairing because he can instantly refresh Dimensional Rip, and has Solar Bind.

Global Mobility Boosters:
Helps Crawler move around the map and farm or go to fights more effectively. These spells pair well with Arrival to give Crawler very significant global impact or the option to go to fountain and return fully healed.

AOE Crowd Control / Initiators:
Ideal heroes to set up Arrival. These heroes with a good entrance can deal a ton of damage. Also they are good heroes to teamfight with because Crawler before having Scepter has very limited mobility control.

Cores That Can Damage Through Spell Immunity:
Crawler is a carry that cannot damage through spell immunity, unlike almost all safelane carries. As such, it would be smart to draft Crawler with cores that can deal damage to Spell Immune enemies (usually physical but sometimes Pure). It is a reversal of a lot of usual position damage distribution.

Heal Reduction Heroes:
Heroes that can reduce the healback of Arrival are good allies for Crawler. Heroes that buy items like Spirit Vessel and Eye of Skadi (though Crawler itself is a prime contender for that) count here too.

Saving Heroes:
Crawler is easy to kill for much of the game. These heroes can protect such a vulnerable hero very well especially early game. Counterinitiators count here too.

Stat Boosters:
These heroes can improve key attributes for Crawler, allowing it to be a greater threat with it's abilities before it has farm and buildup of stats from the Arrival passive.

Good Against:

High Armor/Evasion/Attack Resistance/Physical Protection Heroes:
As a scaling magical nuker, Crawler is very effective against heroes who do not have protections from magic damage and focus on physical protection in all its forms.

Passive Reliant Heroes:
Crawler is naturally very effective against heroes that are reliant on their passives, even before it has Scepter due to making those passives weaker with Destabilize. Many of these heroes are also vulnerable to Blind/Disarm.

Kiteable Melee Heroes:
Later in the game, Crawler is much faster than these heroes and is very good at restricting them with it's various debuffs of Blind/Disarm and Slow/Leash, especially with the Dimensional Rip pull talent.

Heroes Vulnerable to Mana Loss:
Usually these are tanky heroes who still need to cast spells to do stuff, Spirit Touch can make them into non-heroes by depleting their mana in a similar vein to Anti-Mage so they would be alive but useless.

High Cooldown Heroes:
Heroes that rely on high cooldown spells to fight can face trouble. Crawler's fast respawn can potentially mean that in a normal game where these heroes would use their high cooldown spells to pickoff and kill the enemy carry, it does not have that value here due to how fast said carry (Crawler) respawns. In principle it is similar to the normal way to counter these heroes (buyback) but without having to buyback.

Non-BKB Cores:
Cosmic Crawler is one of those "all cores are getting BKB or we all die" kind of heroes due to its massive spell damage output and control with debuffs. The cores that are not able to use BKB very well will have a tough game against Crawler.

Illusion Heroes:
Crawler plays a favorable game against illusion heroes. Crawler deals a huge amount of AOE damage with its spells, and illusions will quickly fall under the Stellar Shift threshold and have permanent Blind/Disarm. Arrival's damage in its higher levels also allows it to one-shot most illusions.

Heroes that Like to be At Low Health:
Due to how Cosmic Bind works, heroes that like to be at low health will find themselves continuously debuffed, especially by Blind/Disarm or Slow/Leash if they're melee. This is particularly good against carries that rely on Satanic.


Worst Enemies: (There are many of them due to how specialized Crawler's skillset is and how glaring it's weaknesses are)

Stat Thieves:
Crawler's damage comes from stats, so heroes that reduce them will make it much weaker.

Heroes that get stronger for each kill:
It's easy for these heroes to snowball to victory against Crawler who is ill suited to deal with them and will need to rely on allies to protect it.

Global Interrupters:
Due to Arrival's active giving a minimap indicator to all players when cast near enemies, these two can counter the global teleportation from global range. Silencer can use his ultimate as soon as he sees the spell being cast, and Zeus (with Scepter) can use his ultimate and Nimbus Crawler to stop it as well. As such these heroes can prevent Crawler from ever using its ultimate in combat until late game when it has a very low cooldown.

Silence:
Crawler's spells are all active and silences make it into a creep. It cannot impact the game at all when silenced, which will usually force it to buy BKB or dispels.

Gankers / Jump Heroes:
Crawler has no escape mechanisms so gankers who activate early can easily get a lot of kills on Crawler and ruin it's game. Late game Crawler is still weak to being jumped as it may be blown up before casting any spells.

Base Armor Removal/Ignore:
Crawler's armor naturally almost all comes from Agility and the 6 base armor it has naturally and it is not well suited for a majority of the Armor items in the game. Heroes that can punch through base armor it will be able to tear apart a lot of tank Crawlers very easily into late game, and it would be dependent on it's Cosmic Bind armor talent to stay alive.

Instant Healers:
Heroes that in general can restore huge amounts of life quickly will weaken Crawler, as Cosmic Bind needs heroes to be low on health in order to place its debuffs. Fast healers can effectively remove Cosmic Bind debuffs for their allies. Crawler needs to counter this with Aghs Shard, Skadi, or Shivas.

Heal Amplification:
These heroes will massively improve the heal-back of Arrival's expiration, allowing it to massively outstrip the initial damage it did and come back with a lot more health if the targets survive the duration of the spell. Crawler needs to counter this with Aghs Shard, Skadi, or Shivas.

Damage Nullification and Reflect:
Arrival heals the full amount it's supposed to do at the end no matter how much damage it actually deals. As such enemies that nullify damage will end up with more health than before. Because Arrival is so slow and telegraphed, tanky heroes with Blade Mail can easily deal a huge amount of damage to Crawler with it. Nyx can do both, which can be very frightening.

Anti-Mages:
As Crawler is the most pure caster core ever, heroes (and items) that counter INT cores are obviously big problems. Between the heavy mana costs/burns, magic resistance and scaling nuking that gets stronger with Crawler, these heroes pose a massive threat in most phases of the game. The first 2 can be beaten with good use of upgraded debuffs (Some combination of Break, Silence, and Leash) and the Spell Immune heroes can be outscaled late game as they don't carry as hard as Crawler. Nyx basically cannot be neutralized as a threat and will be a massive threat to Crawler all game, especially since he can also block and return Arrival's damage too. Mage Slayers and Bloodthorns will require good positioning to protect yourself from and good use of dispel and Black King Bar.

(Design by Hae Joon Cho, not made for this concept)


Personality:
The crawler's personality is unknowable as it does not speak, but it seems malevolent. It will still get annoyed at the player if they try to cast spells on cooldown or without mana, and will still attempt to thank players who help or heal it with vague appreciative noises.

Interactions with Other Heroes:
Cosmic Crawler does not talk to anyone, but certain celestial heroes have reactions to it. Demons like Doom and Shadow Fiend are impressed with the Crawler, saying it's like them but somehow more frightening. Enigma claims that the cosmos are not a plaything. Chaos Knight considers it out of it's place and needs to be returned. Weaver shows fear for the Crawler. Zeus is quite confident against it. Keeper of the Light is scared of what may happen to the world now that Crawler's free. Outworld Destroyer says it wasn't supposed to be here yet, which tells it is the thing OD was warning us about. Dawnbreaker also treats Crawler like a monster that she wants to slay from her past.

Lore Strength, Classification, and Comparison:
Gender: Genderless
Age: The True Cosmic Crawler is older than the universe, Avatar body is only a few weeks old
Classification: Interdimensional Cosmic Being, Avatar of Interdimensional Cosmic Being
Powers and Abilities:
For the Avatar Body: Cosmic Energy Manipulation, Dimension Manipulation, Portal Manipulation, Teleportation, Soul Manipulation, Regeneration, Mind Manipulation, Pain Manipulation, Matter Manipulation, Empowerment over time, other light forms of Reality warping, Gravity Manipulation (ARCANA only, when fused with Enigma Eidolons), Chaos Manipulation (ARCANA only, when fused with Chaos Knight Phantasms)
For the True Crawler in it's own dimension: Cross-Dimensional Avatar Creation (Requires aid from the home dimension to complete the process), other abilities unknown but likely similar to it's Avatar but on a greater scale
Stamina: Infinite (due to the Cosmic nature of the Crawler, it has an endless supply of energy)
Intelligence: Unknown, unclear if sentient (Due to its age though, it would be extremely intelligent if it is capable of learning)
Comparable Power Scales:
For the Crawler Avatar: Powerful cosmic beings
Arc Warden, Faceless Void, Dawnbreaker
For Crawler Avatar with ARCANA: Universal scale cosmic beings
The 4 Fundamentals ( Chaos Knight, Io, Keeper of the Light, Enigma), Weaver
For the True Cosmic Crawler: Extradimensional Reality Warping Beings
Ancient Apparition (The real Kaldr, not the "image" of it that is playable), Clasz ( Faceless Void's boss back in Claszureme)

"Voice" Sample:
Similar to the Ultralisk from Starcraft II, voiced by Dee Bradley Baker (a voice actor who is known for his skill in creature noises, and also voiced Techies) Play Video
Equipment Slots (3) and Default:
Head: Cosmic Crawler's Head
Arms: Cosmic Crawler's Arms
Accessory: None (Used for cosmetic things that float around Crawler)
Taunt: None

Set Ideas: ARCANA Creature of the Event Horizon


Design is of Darkmantle from Dungeons and Dragons


Head: Mantle of the Event Horizon
Rarity ARCANA
When passing dimensions, the Cosmic Crawler has often run into the other selves of the Fundamental forces being pulled by the horseman and the living black hole. However, various rips and travels by them has destroyed entire dimensions, leaving them as dark and empty places where no light escapes but are full of those various other selves. As Crawler passes through these destroyed dimensions these other selves of the attached themselves to the Cosmic Crawler, transforming it into a manifestation of darkness itself, out to crush and extinguish the light.

When the Mantle is equipped, Cosmic Crawler has its voice and animations altered. The voice though still unable to talk, sounds less animalistic and more refined. The animations are more erratic and less smooth, with glitch-like visual effects. The Arcana grants dark particle effects around Crawler's head. It changes the all icons such as the top icon and minimap icon. There is also an effect when you kill heroes, where they disintegrate into darkness.

The Arcana has an alternate style that has instead of Black with Yellow Eyes, it has skin that is space-like with stars and eyes that are orange and flaming, essentially gaining Enigma's color scheme and Chaos Knight's flaming eyes. This style is called "The Vile Chaos", which is unlocked if Cosmic Crawler gets 200 kills on enemies inflicted with Arrival, with a max of 10 per game.

The Mantle when equipped changes Crawler's ability icons and visual effects accordingly. All Arcana effects are tied to the Head Slot cosmetic.
>Dimensional and Stellar Shift

>Dimensional Rip
>Cosmic Bind
>Spirit Touch
>Arrival

The Arcana alters Cosmic Crawler's missile from the void ball above into more of a spear:

The Arcana also alters Cosmic Crawler's voice responses, making it deeper but still beastial. The voice becomes more like the Brood Lord from Starcraft II.
Play Video
Arms: Webbed Tentacles of the Event Horizon
Rarity Rare
The newly webbed arms of the Crawler seek to find foes to engulf and crush.

Taunt: Fundamental Moves
Rarity Common
During this taunt, Cosmic Crawler uses its arms and pushes them forward, as if trying to cast Black Hole.
The energies of these eternally dark dimensions only wish to be shared.

Standalone Item: Eye of Skadi
Accessory: Eye of Skadi

Based on the Eye of Skadi item, it is simply the Eye of Skadi item but floating around Crawler like an Invoker reagent. When the player actually has the Eye of Skadi item it glows.
The mystical Eye of Skadi is attracted to the Crawler through it's eons in cold space. Together they form a chilling combination.


Relative Size Comparison:

Thank you for reading my concept. If you enjoyed it, you may enjoy some of my other concepts below:

Galamathet, The Behemoth -A lightning-fast tank and disabler with no fear of mana costs or cooldowns-
Seline, The Aeromancer -A support that excels at re-positioning others in combat-
Fey, The Lash Queen -A very long ranged melee hero with a versatile skillset-
Kurthifa, The Crimson Knight -A carry that weaponizes the power of strength and health-
Pyotr, The Portal Keeper -The Agility Support that controls Mobility and Teleportation-


Additional Reading:

Check out the original forum version of Cosmic Crawler here (under it's old name, Xilixilyl), to see how much this hero has changed.

Some other changes the hero concept has had over time:


Credits:
Cosmic Crawler's Design by Hae Joon Cho
Arcana (Creature of the Event Horizon) Design is of Darkmantle (5th Edition Version) from Dungeons and Dragons.

Icons (and other visual aid resources) created by the talented artists at TheHiveWorkshop:
Dimensional Rip Icon by KeLeNoR
Dimensional/Stellar Shift Icon by Pharaoh_
Cosmic Bind, Spirit Touch, Arcana Spirit Touch, and Arcana Dimensional/Stellar Shift Icons by The Panda
Arrival Icon by San
Arcana Dimensional Rip Icon by 4eNNightmare
Arcana Cosmic Bind Icon by 8512590215848
Arcana Arrival Icon by Mr. Goblin

Void Missiles created by Vinz