[HERO] Karandras, Phoenix Lord of the Striking Scorpions

Karandras:

Strength: 24 + 2.0
Agility: 27 + 2.6
Intelligence: 19 + 1.9


Innate: Shadowstalk
Karandras hides in the dense brush, waiting, watching. With ease he moves forth from tree to tree, striking one moment and gone the next. None see him, and thus their doom has been sealed.

• Skill type: Passive, self
  Karandras gains zero collision and gains transparency within 250 range of a tree. The degree of transparency depends on how many trees are within that set range. For each tree near him, he gains 5/7/9/11/13/15% transparency. He also gains evasion while near trees, to the tune of 1/2/3/4/5/6% evasion per tree also within 250 range of him, with a max of 30% evasion.
  

Skill one: The Scorpion’s Bite
The Scorpion’s Bite is a mandiblaster, albeit much more powerful. It is a neurally activated weapon which fires a hail of deadly metallic shards. These conduct a laser charge to form a bolt of point-blank plasma, which often damages the target enough for a killing blow. The Scorpion’s Bite behaves as such and is even powerful enough to punch a hole through an unlucky foe.

• Skill type: Active
  Mana cost: 50/75/100/125
  Cooldown: 20/18/16/14 seconds
  Range: Melee
  When Karandras uses this on a hero, the Scorpion’s Bite will lance into that enemy, dealing 120/150/180/210 damage. For 3/4/5/6 seconds afterwards, Karandras gains a 1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4x multiplier to damage while they writhe in pain from the initial blow.
  

Skill 2: Scorpion’s Claw
A power fist and shuriken catapult in one, the Scorpion’s Claw allows Karandras to seamlessly flow into assaults, surprising out an unwary foe with the first volley, and then slamming into it with a strike of crackling energy.

• Skill type: Active
  Mana Cost: 100/125/150/175
  Cooldown: 30/23/19/15
  Casting Range: 400/500/600/700
  Karandras fires a cluster of shurikens at his target, doing 65/90/115/140 damage, and then closes in at 25/30/35/40% movement speed to his target. Once he reaches his target, he pauses for 1.0/0.75/0.5/0.25 seconds and then eviscerates the target with the claw, doing 1.7/1.8/1.9/2.0x his normal damage. The charge can be cancelled, at which point he has 3/4/5/6 seconds to choose another target before the movement speed and critical damage wear off..
  

Skill 3: Timeless Spirit
Karandras has suffered death time and time again, only to rise again, for he cannot die like mortals. He will fight until the end of time, the Rhana Dandra, accumulating untold wisdom and experience. No matter the individual, physical body of the bearer, Karandras’s spirit will always predominate, to take the lives of countless more enemies of the Eldar.

• Skill type: Passive
  Mana Cost: 50/40/30/20% of Karandras’s current mana.
  Cooldown: 80/60/40/20 seconds
  Karandras cannot die like normal heroes. Enemy heroes that do kill him will get their corresponding gold and honor, but he will have a choice to respawn at the fountain or at his place of death. Allied units which walk within 100/150/200/225 range of his body donate a portion of their life to restore his life. All allies "donate" 4/8/12/16% of their life to Karandras, who then transforms their energy into his own. All health received by creeps will be multiplied by 1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4x, while all health received by heroes will be multiplied by 1.2/1.4/1.6/1.8x .When Karandras reaches 100/90/80/70% maximum health, he will reincarnate on the spot, becoming invulnerable for 2/3/4/5 seconds. If Karandras gets more health than is needed to break the threshold, he will regain that health during that period of invulnerability. Additionally, when denying allied creeps, he can take 70/80/90/100% of the health that remained on that creep before its death.
  

note: model for aoe effect (the green one) (could also use this) (.)


Ult: Darkness and Light
Like his predecessor, Arhra, Karandras utilizes the bloodlust of the killer, but he has tempered and refined it with the patience of the hunter. He is able to lie in wait for his prey for days on end before finally striking and ripping his opponents apart before they are even aware of his presence.

• Skill type: Active Toggle
  Mana Cost: Variable, see below.
  Cooldown: Toggle, see above.
  Karandras becomes invisible on all terrain types and gains an additional 10/15/20% movement speed. For every 500/600/700 distance he walks, he uses 50/35/20 mana, but he does not use up any mana while standing still. If he stands still for 15/10/5 seconds, he draws the shadows to him and gains the Hunter’s Gaze buff.
  

• The Hunter’s Gaze buff gives him maximum sight range at both day and night and shows heroes within 1000/2000/3000 range who are below 30/40/50% health. In addition, he gains 10/20/30% bonus damage against these heroes.
  If a hero with any health walks within 500 range of Karandras while he is standing still for 5/4/3 seconds and has the Hunter’s Gaze buff, Karandras has a 30/40/50% chance for all attacks against that hero to deal pure damage for 5/10/15 seconds. Hunter's Gaze lasts for 15/25/35 seconds and adds 5/10/15 mana to the above cost.
  When the ult is not in effect, he will incur an additional investment of 3/6/10 mana per second to maintain the Hunter's Gaze buff.
  

I like how you think eternal warrior should be a regular skill

So I like most of it. However:

The inmate is needlessly complicated with the per tree bonus. You can take that out
Also, get rid of the aoe scaling cause ATM the first level is pretty useless.

Mandi and claw work
Does the bonus damage on mandi apply to only him or all damage?
Does the critical still proc if he changes targets?

Timeless spirit (eternal warrior)
Too much for a regular skill. As it is pretty much reincarnation. Not to mention that its not specific to him and could he given to all of the phoenix lords. I would save this idea for the item.

Can you find a better make for the ult?
And I think it could be simplified a not but I like it

Edit: overall he's good, but lost most of his damage output outside of his actives. And doesn't have much to do outside smashing stuff. So either give him some more effects or damage boosts

I rather like the tree scaling. xD It adds an aspect of realism that a flat increase in transparency wouldn't, since Striking Scorpions aren't exactly stealthy in open ground.

I would have given him this, but it's far too OP considering the amount of woods we have on the board.

Bonus damage still applies only to him for mandi, but he can strike one target with the shuriken volley and then cancel the charge as he comes into range to strike another, but that strike has to be quick or the critical will fade.

Again, as with Aun'va, Timeless Spirit helps to balance his gameplay. Before, he was all about dealing damage and would fall apart if he got nuked 2 times in succession.

Reincarnation means that you lose no gold, while having an extensive cooldown. Spirit still loses you gold, but you get back on your feet faster and have less of a cooldown, while active skills still do 100% of their damage.

And while it's not specific to him, that's not a good reason to outlaw it as a skill. Many Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Daemons share the same spells and abilities, so does that mean any one skill should be disallowed?

Arguably, he needed to lose a lot of damage output. The ult makes up for it much more, though.

Another angle then: he dies, he doesn't really get protection from nukes vause he still does. Them he spawns in the same spot, without attack power. All you do is reduce death time really

And how many times, when you just died, do you wish you had a hero to defend an outpost at a critical time? I could give him some sort of revenge buff, but we've already been through a path where Karandras does too much damage, and I'd rather not have to do that again.

The attack power debuff is simply to prevent it from becoming too powerful. It'll probably only apply to his base damage, meaning that after 5 seconds, he should be back to at least being able to do damage to things.

After 25 seconds, he's back to 100% attack, but I can increase the amount of attack regained per second easily. And I'm just going to facepalm, since I'll have to repeat myself again. Active skills will still do 100% of their damage. He'll still be able to cast spells. From what you've said of Karandras, you're telling me he should be a purely attacking machine without any dimension or balance, which is like telling me paper is flat, rocks are hard, and scissors are sharp. Yes, it is, but what's written on that piece of paper? What is the texture of the rock? What design does the scissor cut in?

There are way, way too many aspects of a hero to count even, but Karandras does not fit into the role of a hard carry as he used to. Now, he's more a ganker/initiator/comboer, as he really is.

And eternal warrior can be replaced with 150 gold and a short death timer. It offers him nothing while is alive and could potentially get him killed twice of he's killed away from an outpost.

I'm all for giving him some sort of defensive or survivability skill, but this really doesn't help

5 second invulnerability plus NO COLLISION THROUGH TREES means that if Karandras isn't stupid or plain retarded, it's not hard to escape from any group of heroes who might want to focus on him repeatedly. He can even just run off to the side of the map where all the trees are and chill there, since pretty much nothing can get to him there.

Its goal is to keep him in battle basically 100% of the time, since almost an entire level is lost when a hero dies and has to wait to respawn then walk all the way back to where the battle is.

And why should he be in battle 100% of the time? He's a stalker he doesn't deal with constant battle.

Ill change my mind a bit its a good skill. Just not for him
Unless he is a hard carry or an important supporter, he doesn't *need* to be in battle all the time.

The skill fits better on Asurmen than it does on this guy.
Its not a bad skill. But there could be a better skill than this one for this skillset

If a stalker is always around you, waiting to pounce, doesn't that make you slightly more hesitant to try and push if you know a hero can tear you apart?

At lvl 1 he'll be useless for 20 seconds then he can do 230 damage untill he gets his attack back 80 seconds later

At lvl 4 he'll be useless for 5 seconds then he can do 230 damage untill he gets his attack back 20 seconds later.

Very threatening.

I would much rather him have a skill that would allow him to slip away into the shadows unharmed or to recover

Lol, Grass, your calculations are silly. He already has no collision to slip into the shadows unharmed and if I gave him another escape skill, it'd be absurd.

Just for reference, let's calculate the maximum combo Karandras can pull off, if all factors are right.

Variables:
An enemy hero is below 30% health and walks within Karandras's range to trigger the 50% pure damage bonus. Let's give Karandras 150 damage, because that just sounds good.

An explanation of the variables will be written below, if you have trouble following.

1.3x(120+1.4x((110+150x2)+150x2))

Bonus from Ult. *(Bite + multiplier bonus from bite *((Claw's damage) + 2 attacks within the 6 seconds for bite's bonus))

Assume 35% armor reduction off half the damage, so 860 damage will be pure and 559 will come from the reduced damage. That's ~1400 damage there, assuming all things have gone right.

Let's say he just revived, though, from his third skill. What kind of damage can he do 10 seconds after?

1.3x(120+1.4x((110+150*0.4*2)+150*0.4*2)

He'll still pump out 793 raw damage. Using same damage reduction, 138 damage comes from armor, 396 is pure, for a total of 534 actual damage.

When you're faced with a respawn time of a minute or more, to have any damage done after a death is amazing. I'll probably even lessen the penalties some, since you believe he's butthurt a little. xD;

In short, when he's not dead, he outputs damage like no other, if the conditions are right, and even if they aren't perfect, casters will justly fear him being able to come from the trees.

So he has to stand still for 11 seconds to do that btw. (silenced for 6 and then 5 more for the hunter's gaze buff)

By that time there will either be a ton of enemy heroes or your killer would be long gone.
But on the plus side your back in the lane, which has no effect on you cause your a ganker and you don't need to be in the lane 100% of the time.

He can already slip away cause of the innate and the ult. So he needs a skill that will allow him to recover when he is away from heroes after a gank

Oh and btw I think that if he has the hunters gaze buff the ult should cost mana per second while standing still as well

Grass, I'm not trying to make him OP. Sit back for a second and look what you're trying to do. You want to make a carry hero be able to take any amount of punishment and then recover it all back. That's a recipe for disaster. Imagine if Karandras had 15-20% life steal in his current incarnation. That's tantamount to what you are suggesting.

Not at all. He's a ganker. He has no sustained damage output. His damage comes from burst (which you mathed previously)
I'm suggesting a skill that only works when he's alone, away from enemies, and it would serve to help him move from gank to gank without the need of healing items or fountains. And it shouldn't heal him to full HP.

Err, why? The other 10 ganker heroes demand to know why you're doing this for Karandras and not for them?

Because hero diversity exists.
If every ganker has a skill that healed them then it would he lame.
Not to mention a couple ganlers have ways to keep them alive or strong between ganks.

Gankers usually don't get touched very much by the targets they're trying to attack, since the targets often are at less than 50% health or a caster or an agility hero. Or the ganker has support. Gankers can't expect to go head to head with a hero at full health and *not* be damaged.

That said, he already has transparency, in addition to an actual invisibility with his ult. This means that normal means of revealing him won't work, because people will get their gem and still see nothing at first.

For him, not being seen is the best protection he can get, on top of a 30% evasion when he initiates.

And on the fluff side, there's very, very little to suggest he has some sort of healing move outside of battle. So that's why I can't see it.

If your going into fluff, phoenix lords don't 're-knit' their forms. They come back to life when another eldar sons their armor.

And this skill set's burst damage is notoriously low for a ganker. The burst damage comes from a few attacks after with the bonus damage and crit. He's going to trade a few blows and he'll need something between battles.

Anyway, even if he doesn't get a healing skill, we need to replace eternal warrior on this skillset.

Except Phoenix Lords are hollow. There's not an actual Eldar inside of them. It's not like an Exarch, where an individual of flesh and blood is inside. Another Eldar does give their energy to reincarnate a Phoenix Lord, a la "donning", but we have a profound lack of Eldar to give their souls for Phoenix Lords.

Again, he did too much damage as he is in the versions now. Before you start sounding the S.O.S about Karandras not doing any damage, you might want to take a step back and first see what he can do. If I increase the mana cost on gaze, it'll lower the time he'll be able to maintain it, effectively lowering his DPS.

So you're trying to do two things at once in suggesting he doesn't do enough damage, yet trying to nerf his damage some more.

Here are the lists of advantages he has:

- Transparency (I can increase the %'s on this to make it even better)
- Evasion (Same thing with increasing the cap)
- Best initiation move in the game with Claw, considering he can do it from the trees out of sight. He practically runs at 522 movement speed from 700 range, so a hero has ~1.5 seconds to react to a Karandras barreling down on them from the woods with a surprise.
- Vision on wounded heroes and bonus damage
- Ability to proc pure damage on half of his attacks and damage

All he's missing is attack speed, which Agility gives in spades. He does not need another skill to boost his damage at all. He lost his critical, but Cyclic serves as a superb alternative. Now then, if you can't understand how much offensive ability this gives him, what more do you want? Do you want him to crit and get as much attack speed and damage as well on top of all of this?

I'll start modifying Eternal Warrior in a form more palatable for you, but there's no way I'll increase the amount of offensive damage he does, because that's bordering on overkill.

I'm confused. Where did I day he has no offensive power?

He has no sustainable dps cause his damage comes from his skills
He has very little *burst* damage
Most of his ganking damage comes from the crit on claw and the bonus damage from bite.

I didn't day he needs more or less
I suggest the manacost on the gaze portion because of how powerful he is with it. Gaze itself won't cost manaa but standing still using the ult with the gaze buff will cost mana
You already double the ult's manacost with the gaze buff anyway. Just apply it to standing still as well

Edit:
he Phoenix Lords are immortal, after a fashion. When a Phoenix Lord is slain in battle, his place is taken by another Eldar who assumes his costume and identity. In this way the Phoenix Lord is reborn into a fresh cycle of existence. His suit includes a spirit stone which contains the spirits of all the Eldar who have become that Phoenix Lord. yet, no matter how many different individuals a Phoenix Lord may have been, his mind is forever the same, driven by the dominant personality of the first and greatest warrior to wear the suit

The have a body, the eldar inside asumes the phoenix lords identity and his mind is taken over by the original lord

I don't see any physical body mentioned in that. A person is absorbed, but there's no actual body inside the suit of armor.

It's been mentioned, especially with Karandras, that Phoenix Lords are bound by the warp potential of their souls and have no need for a physical body; Karandras came to a craftworld, wounded with several gaping holes in his armor, yet nothing was within except a darkness. He went to an Eldar, who gave himself to Karandras. That eldar individual vanished into thin air. The next scene Karandras is seen fully healed and armored as if all new.

______________________________

Is he a ganker, Grass, or a carry? Carries have sustainable DPS, gankers do not, or at least should not. He has all the tools to roam around the battlefield with impunity and serves as an excellent harasser/ganker. He's not Asurmen in being able to output consistent, high damage.

Again, doublespeak. You say that he's too powerful with Gaze yet say that his sustainable and burst DPS are too low. Make up your mind! How is he too powerful with Gaze in some way that doesn't apply to sustainable and burst DPS?

And well... If you say a ganker has no burst damage, that's equal to saying he has no offensive power. Unless you can give me the difference between the two, in relation to gankers, that is.

He is a ganker he has no sustainable dps. This is apparent.

His *actual burst* is very low, capping out at about 230 damage. But the most of his damage output comes in the few seconds after he initiates, from his attacks, through his first two skills.

He has good ganking power, you mathed this already I don't think he's weak at all.

But the hunters gaze buff gives a ton of awesome bonuses with exactly no cost of he is standing still which he can so while waiting to gank an unsuspecting victim.

He does not need sustainable DPS as a hero when he gets the awesome bonuses from Gaze, that is my point.

I could raise the actual burst for the Mandiblasters, though.

And I don't see the point of giving him a mana per second cost for standing still with Gaze. It'll drain his mana even more, and with such a heavy spell-based set, he'll need his mana to initiate and finish well.

There's no need for an additional cost, seeing as 40 mana per 700 distance at 429 movement speed is equivalent to 40/1.5 = 25 mana per second while moving.

I agree! XD he's damage potential is fine, leave it alone

And again, he gets full sight, invis, 3k aoe hero locator, bonus damge, and a chance to deal pure damge. For no cost of he's scoping out a target.

I'm not saying anything major, maby like 10. But enough that its not free
And remeber, this mana cost only applies while the ult is on. If he isn't using his ult, it won't cost him mana

Ok, I updated Timeless Spirit some as well as the ult.