Amalgam, the Slime

Lore: The festering cesspools of Archaea are the closest thing the world has left to the primordial ooze of creation past. Here, microorganisms fight for survival by feeding on the small and hiding from the large, an eternal game of cat and mouse over aeons of playtime.

But every game must have a winner, and after ten million years of competition a single organism of preposterous size crawled from the largest of the pools, slowly sliding across the land. And though it had won the game, it was still hungry: still eager to add more things to its ever expanding mass.

Dire Strength Melee hero
Strength Gain: 1.2
Agility Gain: 1.2
Intelligence Gain: 1.2
BAT: 1.7
Base Movement Speed: 280
Base Armor: 3.5
Base Damage: 58-64

Q: Splash (No Target Ability)

Amalgam releases a discharge of toxic sludge in a small AOE around it, disarming opponents and dealing base damage, plus additional damage based on the number of slurp charges it has.

Cast Time: 0.0
AOE: 200
Disarm Time: 1.5/2/2.5/3 seconds
Base Damage: 50/80/110/140
Damage Per Charge: 1/2/3/4
Max Charges Counted: 50

Mana: 70/110/150/190
Cooldown: 12/10/8/6

Even when you're the biggest fish in the pond, it helps if your prey can't fight back.

Notes:

- The maximum damage of this ability is 100/180/260/340.

- Affects invisible enemies and enemies hidden by fog of war.

- Does not pierce spell immunity.

W: Shed (Toggle)

Amalgam gains speed by converting its mass into a festering ooze that trails along behind it, slowing opponents and dealing damage over time. If all of Amalgam's slurp charges are consumed, the bonus speed is increased by 50%.

Bonus Speed: 10/20/30/40
Slurp Charges Consumed per Second: 2
Slow: 15%/25%/35%/45%
Damage per Second: 50/70/90/110
Trail Lifespan: 3 seconds

The small are annoyingly fast, and those that can't keep up starve.

Notes:

- Grants a total of 15/30/45/60 bonus move speed when all slurp charges are consumed.

- The trail begins at the center of Amalgam's model and extends to 200 units behind it.

E: Slurp (Passive)

For each enemy Amalgam kills, it gains slurp charges that grant it bonus strength. When Amalgam is hit with an enemy hero's auto-attack, it loses a charge. A percentage of charges is lost on death as well. Additionally, Amalgam converts some of its mass into a lardar, ensuring that it always spawns with a certain amount of charges.

Charges gained per kill: 1/2/2/3
Strength gained per charge: .5/.5/1/1
Charges lost on death: 50%/45%/40%/35%
Charges on spawn: 4/8/12/16

More. MORE.

Notes:

- The bonus strength is added to the base attribute, and is affected by abilities such as Vengeance Aura and Empower.

- Has no upper limit.

- Amalgam's model grows bigger with each charge

- Yes, you can theoretically suicide to Roshan to gain four charges before creeps spawn. I am fine with this.

R: Swallow (Single Target)

Amalgam consumes an enemy hero and traps them inside its enormous mass, fully disabling them and dealing pure damage over time. The effect time is increased the more slurp charges Amalgam has. Amalgam can move and use items during this time, but cannot use teleportation items or be affected by teleportation abilities like Test of Faith. The effect ends if Amalgam is hit by a certain number of attacks. If an enemy hero dies to this ability, Amalgam gains permanent swallow charges that increase its strength.

Damage over time: 100/150/200
Base effect time: 2/3/4 seconds
Number of charges per additional second: 30/24/18
Max effect time: 10 seconds
Attacks to break effect: 5/9/13
Swallow charges gained: 1/2/3
Strength per charge: 2

Consume the strong to become stronger.

Notes:

- The number of charges needed for max effect time is 240/168/108.

-The max damage this ability can deal is 1000/1500/2000

I belive for the ultimate, Amalgam should be slowed based on the difference of strength he and the hero he moves with inside has, but you should increase the amount of hits required for a hero to be freed.. For example, if he swallows DK, he will move slower than when swallowing Pugna. If someone has more strength than he does, he can't move at all.

Amalgam's ult is a bit overpowered. (2000 PURE dmg) You probably should make so it deals magical or physical damage instead because this kills almost any support. Or make so it deals percentage based damage instead? That's alot less OP but still destroys tanks.

First of all, thanks to my favourite idiot for keeping this part of the forum slightly active :)

Honestly, this hero is interesting as hell!
I love how you make the hero according to slime's behaviour in most RPGs, including how they grow bigger and how they tend to 'devour' anything.

I can give you specific review if you want, but I just wanna say that it's an interesting hero, and thanks!

P.S: I have a Slime as well in my hero stash, I'll probably post it soon to copy your Amalgam :p

Hey, I'll gladly take a full on review from the OG hero creator. Sock it to me, Yz! :D

Well, you asked for it! :D

Normally, I'd start with the stats and role of this hero, but this hero has an interesting mechanic bound to his third skill, so let's start there shall we? Honestly, the scaling system offers more than obvious. The fact that level 2 to 3 of this skill grants double strength means that levelling it to third level gives double efficiency, but at the same time, making the level 1 and 2 of this skill rather weak. In normal skills, this mean that the skill should be left until later in the game, opting for more important nuke/disable (which his other 2 skills are).

However, this is the tricky part (kudos to you), his main nuke (Q) REQUIRES a high number of Charges to be effective, forcing the skill to be taken more earlier. Very interesting and nicely thought-out! This, nonetheless, is inversely the situation in correlation with his second skill, which benefits more if he lack the Charges (I assume if he doesn't learn E, his W will always be at its utmost efficiency?).

Therefore, this narrows his early gameplay into Q-W (that focuses on being a mobile disabler), or into Q-E (that focuses on being a tanky nuker) because adding a value point to this skill is useless. Effectively, this opens up an offlane role (3) OR greedy support/ganker role (4). Really well thought-out, just with one small question: when he lose Slurp Charge from auto attack, does the HP reduction counts from the maximum or current? (say, if he has 500 out of 1000 HP and maximum level of this skill, and the enemy attacks for 50 damage, will he has 450 out of 943 HP, OR 393 out of 943 HP?).

If the answer is from maximum (the 450 HP), then currently the maximum level is really OP. It gives him 4/16/24/48 strength on spawn, without needing him to do anything. Level three is still torelable because a few hits will take the strengths away, but 48 strength? That's 912 HP that you cannot do anything about! This simple question becomes the borderline of OD being OP or not as well, by the way.

Since I've talked about his role before, now I'll talk about the stats. Again, great job at balancing the hero! The low gains and movespeed offset his otherwise-OP skill. However, you didn't specify his starting stats so I cannot talk more about this.

To the other skills, his Q now. I like how this skill is supposed to be deterrent for melee heroes to attack him (which really fits the third role), while at the same time disarm for a decent amount of time (fits the fourth role). However, to better fit this skill to both roles, I'd suggest increasing the base damage, and making the disarm time and damage/charge static, while balancing it via higher cooldown scaling. This way, the skill will scale better for both the damage and disabling function. I'd suggest the skill to disable for 4 seconds, and deal the damage of 100/130/160/190 + 3 extra damage (for a maximum of 50 charges, keeping same maximum damage), with 20/16/12/8 seconds cool down and static 90 MP cost.

For his W, well... nothing much, just that the damage is WAYY too high at the highest level, on top of a 45% (!!) slow for indefinite amount of time, at no risk for him but the removed charges. Honestly, this is like Rot on steroid+meth, especially if used for the fourth role that makes this skill has no drawback. I'd suggest actually reducing the slow to a fixed amount, and adding MP cost, that or reduce the damage substantially. I'd prefer the first option, probably ending up with 30/60/90/120 damage and 25% slow for 20 MP cost/second. I imagine with his low MP, this will be a good way to balance this skill up, also the damage scaling will stop this skill to be abusable except by levelling it up.

Now, for the ultimate (finally). I think that it's an impressive skill! It's kinda like Flaming Lasso but made awesome (or made kinda OP). The ability to remove an enemy hero for a maximum of 10 seconds is really invaluable, just like how strong Doom is. I'm aware that the way to do that is to snowball out of control, so it's not really that big of a deal, but I think reducing the maximum limit to double the current level would be good (4/6/8 seconds or 200/300/400 pure damage). This way, you can just increase one second per a static amount (say, 20, charges). Also, you need less hits. Supernova requires 5/8/11 hits on a six seconds duration, and if that's achieved, Phoenix dies... this skill requires 13 hits, on 4 seconds (++) duration only to hasten the release. I'd say that requiring 4/6/8 hits is fair enough, considering he has his Q that totally disarm people around him, and he can still use other items ( Force Staff?) and move.

Well, that's that! Great job!