La'thaal

A version of this hero have been implemented in the mod Angel Arena and can be seen here, though it's an older version.

MELEE 150 * 22 + 2.90 46 - 54 18 + 2.00 310 20 + 2.20 3

Divine Intervention While channeling, stun the target and reduce its armor by 1 every second. The stun lasts for 0.1 seconds, plus an additional +0.1 seconds for every second that elapses. Mystic Twister While channeling, deals damage over time in a 300 radius at target location and grants True Sight on enemies inside the area. Conviction While channeling, grants the target 40%/50%/60%/70% status resistance and 20/30/40/50 health regeneration. Superposition Teleport to target location, leaving behind an illusion of yourself. If a channeled ability was interrupted, the illusion will continue to channel that ability for you. Has 1/2/3 charges and generates one charge every 25/20/15 seconds.

	25: +1 Superposition Charge or +250 Cast Range 20: Superposition Grants Invisibility (2s) or -100% Illusions Damage Taken 15: +100 Mystic Twister Radius or +30 Mystic Twister DPS 10: +200 Health or +25% XP Gain
	Grants 1 additional charge to Superposition.

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Divine Intervention While channeling, stun the target and reduce its armor by 1 every second. The stun lasts for 0.1 seconds, plus an additional +0.1 seconds for every second that elapses. The armor reduction lingers for 4 seconds.

Mana Cost: 100 Cooldown: 15

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Mystic Twister While channeling, deals 60/90/120/150 damage per second in a 300 radius at target location and grants True Sight on enemies inside the area.

Mana Cost: 150 Cooldown: 7 / 5 / 3 / 1

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Conviction While channeling, grants the target 40%/50%/60%/70% status resistance and 20/30/40/50 health regeneration.

Mana Cost: 100 Cooldown: 30 / 25 / 20 / 15

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Superposition Teleport to target location up to 600 units away, leaving behind an illusion of yourself. If a channeled ability was interrupted, the illusion will continue to channel that ability for you. Has 1/2/3 charges and generates one charge every 25/20/15 seconds.

Mana Cost: 75 Cooldown: 0

Alternative Channeled Abilities

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Aura Slicer While channeling, La'thaal releases circular waves from herself that travel outwards once every second. Enemy units hit by a wave are stunned for 0.1 seconds and has their armor reduced by 1 for 5 seconds. The stun duration and armor reduction amount are multiplied by the wave number.

Mana Cost: 125 Cooldown: 25

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Vow of Silence While channeling, enemy units within 400/600/800/1000 radius are Silenced and Slowed for 3 seconds whenever they cast a spell.

Mana Cost: 125 Cooldown: 35 / 30 / 25 / 20

Design Space

This concept has a very large design space in that it doesn't matter what the channeled abilities does, as long as you combine her ultimate with three channeled abilities the concept still works. Thus I feel it's necessary to dedicate a section highlighting various possible versions and additions that can be made to this hero.
End Effects:
End Effects are effects that's activated at the end of a channeled ability. An example would be:
Mystic Twister - End Effect: Reduce the cooldown of La'thaal's abilities by 1/2/3/4 seconds.
This end effect is kind of insignificant in the early game, but is a nice boost in ability up-time in the late game. It also allows La'thaal to spam-cancel Mystic Twisters in fountain to hasten the generation of Superposition charges, or if you have enough mana regen, do so out of combat before an engagement.
Aghanim's Scepter:
Currently, it just gives one additional Superposition charge, but it could do something more interesting instead like adding another channeled ability for you to use.

Gameplay

The thing about this hero that's different from other heroes in DotA is the aspect of protecting your illusions from being interrupted or killed. For this you have access to your ultimate Superposition that allows for precision placement of your illusions. The difficult part is to balance the distance from your target. Place your illusion too close and they're easily killed or interrupted, and if placed too far away the target may run out of the effective range of your abilities.

There are many ways for your opponents to interrupt your channeled abilities. Any silence, root, and stun will interrupt you, making heroes such as Silencer, Ember Spirit and Clockwerk hard to deal with. There are also heroes with illusion killing abilities, such as Outworld Devourer and Lion. On top of that there's some items you can get such as Orchid Malevolence, Eul's Scepter of Divinity and Dagon 1 that does the same thing.

To prevent your opponents from interrupting your abilities there are two main ways of accomplishing this. The first and obvious one is to place your illusions in clever positions, be creative. The other is to exploit the fact that using Superposition will disjoint projectiles. If you want to protect one of your abilities from being canceled, you can make sure to not have an illusion channel it and channel it yourself. If someone then tries to interrupt you and you have a spare charge of Superposition saved you can evade that projectile by disjointing it.

Items

This hero is very mana intensive, so a combination of Tranquil Boots and Soul Ring is great in the early game. This allows you to use Mystic Twister to farm neutral camps more often. If you have enough mana you can use Conviction on yourself to restore health. Before that though, you may want to stock up on a couple of Clarity potions. Since they are not canceled by damage from creeps, they can be used while farming neutral camps with Mystic Twister.

Aether Lens is pretty much a must buy on this hero. The additional cast range benefits each and every one of your abilities immensely. It provides additional blink distance on your ultimate and increases both cast range and break distance of your channeled abilities. You may also consider Medallion of Courage for even more armor reduction as well as increasing your mana regeneration. It will also later be upgraded to Solar Crest which gives your illusions evasion, allowing them to better survive physical damage.

In the late game you may want to consider an Aghanim's Scepter as it allows for one additional Mystic Twister to be channeled, increasing your damage output significantly.

Lore

The tradition of the Dervish is unique to Maalar and traces back to the Shattered Dynasty era when wandering ascetics sought to bring comfort to a land engulfed in civil war. Soon the traditional traveler's staff was replaced by a scythe, a humble weapon, but deadly in skilled hands. The fighting techniques of the Dervish are often stunning to behold, as they make use of whirling moves that summon the power of wind and earth, as well as displaying the power of the gods that they revere. A true Dervish, however, is always the calm and confident eye of the storm.

The Dervish's attire is a testament to the dual nature of the Dervish as both priest and warrior. Followers of this profession wear a robe to show their faith in the divine, bracers to demonstrate their prowess in combat, and a hood to mark their humility before the gods. This garb provides limited armor, but the Dervish is shielded in battle by their agility and by the conviction of their divine spells.

Appearance

I'll leave this up to the CHP guys. Currently, lore, theme and ability icons are taken from the Dervish profession of the game Guild Wars and thus should be replaced. I still want to motivate my choice though.

This concept is centered around channeled abilities and when I think of channeling, I think of rituals and dancing. Thus it makes sense to me for this hero to wear a dancers uniform. For this I think that the dervishes and their long skirts makes for an excellent theme for this concept. It can also be decked out with armor and bracers to make the theme more fit for war. The interpretation of the dervishes by the game Guild Wars fits this perfectly and is the main inspiration behind the theme of this concept.

Credits

Template images such as for the attributes, movement speed, mana cost, etc, as well as the layout of the page comes from / is inspired by:
http://www.dota2.com/heroes/

The talent tree image is from:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trenchwarfaredota.talenttreefordota

The Aghanim's upgrade image is from:
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/dota2/Aghanim%27s_Scepter

Skill icon images comes from:
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gallery_of_high_resolution_dervish_skill_icons

The character portrait is edited by me, originally from:
https://www.deviantart.com/art/Guild-Wars-326614999

The overall theme of the concept, including the lore, is inspired by / taken from the Dervish profession from the game Guild Wars.

That's some outstanding formatting!

This is a very interesting and unique concept, I wonder how well it would actually work considering it's all about channeling. It's good at keeping enemies under control and it's still able to deal good amounts of DPS, pretty cool.

Keep up the great work. :)

Thanks! Though I would've liked for there to be an option for vertical alignment, but I made it work.

Them all being channeled abilities is what makes the concept interesting imo. The abilities are strong, especially against a single target, but they also leave you immobile and vulnerable when using them.

Sees formatting.

Drools.

Onto balance, this seems really OP as with divine intervention, you can hold them for 8 seconds, with 2 mystic twisters and 2 divine interventions you can end up with 6400 damage dealt to enemies that probably can't do anything about it. (Snap out qrqrwrw in a second after a blink and they couldn't possibly even know what hit them, way more effective than Poof combos and those are harder to do.)

I would nerf mystic twister, making it so it does increasing damage for 4 seconds and then ends, but really anything would work as long as the end result doesn't do a total of 1600 area damage.

Also, using just divine intervention lets you lock down an enemy for 30 seconds while you beat them up and is therefore just rude, so maybe look into nerfing that. An unpurgable buff making you immune to it for 12 seconds after it ends would do nicely, though you still have the issue of making it possible to hold down 80% of their team for 8 seconds.

I don't personally like Vow of Silence, as it is really weak at low levels and I am having trouble thinking of a situation where it would be better than another Divine Intervention. What if this also did damage to them, or affected the whole AOE every time anyone inside cast a spell?

Amazing idea however, you did what I thought was impossible and made a hero with multiple channeled abilities synergize ( Sand King doesn't count). Well done!

Btw how do you add a banner showing all your hero creations?

It's called a signature.

• Click on your name under your Invoker pic. This will get you to your profile settings.
• Go to Settings.
• It's on your 'Signature' tab.
• Bam! write anything you like. It will appear on your every posts.

I don't think Mystic Twister is particularly offensive, balance wise. Compared to Sand King's Sandstorm, which deals 100 magical dps, 160 physical dps in a much smaller area seems fair to me.

Perhaps more offensive is Divine Intervention, but there are some additional things I want you to consider. Divine Intervention, like Naga Siren's Ensnare, is dispelled by Ethereal form / Ghost Scepter and even though the ability pierces spell immunity BKB still dispels it (dispellable by any dispel). It's also possible to cancel the ability itself with a stun or silence, and what about Force Staff?. Also, you said "possible to hold down 80% of their team for 8 seconds", how is one supposed to accomplish that?

I think that you're severely underestimating the power of Vow of Silence. True, it's perhaps not terribly powerful in small skirmishes, but it at least can be useful against certain heroes when ganking. What's more devastating is its impact in team fights. Fights in general are mostly about explosive power and only being able to cast one spell every 4 seconds is downright crippling.

Overall, what I'm trying to deliver is an intriguing concept with interesting mechanics and not necessarily a balanced hero. While trying to achieve a balanced concept is still appreciated, it's incredibly hard to actually achieve on paper alone.

A qrqrqrq will cast divine intervention on 4 people...
Wait I'm an idiot and the spell has cooldown. You still can hold someone in place for 56 seconds and longer with octarian, but its not as OP as I thought (how does one come to say things like this?).

The reason I think Mystic Twister is OP is that you can have several of them channeling at once. If those are all on one person, they will get shredded. With a q and 3 r's (this time my example is actually possible) you end up with 4800 aoe damage. Unless the damage doesn't stack, in which case its not that bad.

You're also right, Vow of silence is better than I thought. Having an aoe silencer Last Word might actually be OP if you couldn't stun the illusion.

I also just realized that this hero is not very useful until level 6. Not sure what can be done about that.

"Overall, what I'm trying to deliver is an intriguing concept with interesting mechanics and not necessarily a balanced hero."
You certainly succeeded at that, sorry if my comments come across as too criticizing.