Okay, so I’ve finally been playing SotT some lately (after avoiding her like the plague mostly), to really get a feel for why she’s a problem. Aside from her rather obvious balance issues in terms of her raw damage output, she is simply not a support career and I think that should be rectified. So here’s some ideas I’ve had to improve her balance-wise and concept-wise (please note that I’m limiting my ideas to changes that would not require new game assets being added):
1) A Murder of Spites: Reworked to give Kerillian and nearby allies up to 15% bonus damage to wounded targets depending on their health.
2) A Sustenance of Leechlings: Reworked to give a nearby ally (including Kerillian) with the least total health temporary health whenever another nearby ally would gain temporary health while at full health. The temporary health gained in this way is reduced by 50%.
3) Thornwake:
No longer blocks player attacks.
Enemies can now be pinged through it.
Now inflicts bleeding damage on all enemies that it hits when summoned (essentially giving Bloodrazor Thicket’s current bleed damage to Thornwake by default).
Level 10: Isha’s Bounty 15% power removed. Changed to 15% increased team wide healing.
Level 20: Radiant Inheritance changed to 100% stamina Regen, 100% movespeed, and gives the ability to walk through enemies.
Hekarti’s Cruel Bargain changed to 2 seconds per elite kill.
Level 25: Morai-Heg’s Doomsight 3 crits per ally ult changed to 3 crits per kerillian ult. Or 3 crits per any ult, max 3 crits.
Pale Queens choosing from 3 health down to 1.5 health.
Level 30: total rework of all ult versions
Option 1: Creates a box of thorns at target location for 6 seconds. Useful to locking enemies away or giving a safe location to regroup and heal up real quick.
Option 2: Wall lasts for 10 seconds and is quadruple width. Enemies too close to the wall have their movement speed reduced by half and take light bleed damage. Finally a wall that forces the battlefield to change.
Option 3: Thorn Nuke Wall. Spawns the regular wall, but after 6 seconds it explodes dealing the current explosion and bleed damage. Huge payoff, no longer brainless point and click nuke.
Passive 25% healing increase removed. (An attendance of munificents)
Passive execute damage removed. (A murder of spites)
Passive healing siphon changed to give 10% of all temp health generated by anyone to the lowest health team mate. (Sustenance of leechlings)
New passive added: Nearby downed allies have 50% damage reduction.
Personally and I had already spoken about it. I think she should have access to the “Lance and Shield” weapon. As support, there would be no better. Especially with some talent, it would be just huge!
She could have some very interesting builds related to this weapon and have a big supporting career, especially with the knockback talent she has.
If you ask me, all of Kerillian’s classes should have access to spear and shield, albeit with different skins to accentuate the different elf cultures.
I would honestly get rid of the wall baseline. It is too intrusive on battlefield flow, can’t be attacked through, can’t be seen through and most of the time enemies will just navigate around it.
The activated ability should be hip-length or knee-length so that players could still see and attack across it. Or it could even just be thorns on the ground that make all enemies that try to cross it go stuck and take damage.
I would keep the nuke option. The other two would be:
Replaces the wall of thorns with a massive poisonous, barbed blast. All enemies caught in its wake are poisoned, dealing damage to them and reducing their movement and attack speed, as well as increasing all damage they take by 33% for the duration of the poison, which lasts for 10 seconds.
Sends a horizontal wave of thorns 20 feet fowards that knock down all enemies caught in its wake. Enemies are stuck falling over for 6 seconds and has them all staggered for the duration. When the spell ends, their movement is slowed for additional 3 seconds before they can move again at normal speed.
I would actually like to see a complete rework of the ultimate.
Instead of walls, the standard version would now be a filled circle of small thorn tendrils coming out of the ground, slowing and damaging the enemy over time. The circle would be somewhat as large as Conflag staffs fully charged attack, the enemies would be slowed by maybe 20% and they would get like 4 bleed damage every second for the full 5 second ulti duration.
First ulti talent would increase the duration to 8 seconds, would do no damage anymore but the enemies are fully incapable of moving. Would work on bosses too but only for 5 seconds. As animation i would like to see just longer tendrils over the whole enemy body.
Second talent would be like Bloodrazor Thicket. Small circle with the whole thing coming out of the ground. Still with bleed damage and knockback, but without the burst damage on impact.
Third talent would be the standard version with added poison damage.
Free enemies would of course go around the ulti, like they do with fire too.
I too would like a Thornwake rework into an entangling area or something, but I doubt that’s a very realistic idea. Numbers tweaks are one thing. New assets are another.