September 18, 2015
God Concept: Aether, Primordial God of the Upper Air (CTR1)
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Zilby
Aether is one of the primordial deities of the Greeks. Aether is the personification of the bright glowing upper air of the heavens. He embodies the pure upper air that the gods breathe, as opposed to the normal air breathed by mortals. In the evening his mother
Nox drew her veil of darkness between the aether and the aer to bring night to man. In the morn his sister-wife Hemera dispersed these mists, revealing the shining blue aether of day.
(Wikipedia) Having long been kept to the realm of the heavens, with the fate of the world at stake Aether takes wind to the battleground of the gods!
In Smite, Aether takes the role of a
flighty, but frail support. His general purpose is to be very difficult to hit with low damage and little heatlh, while having good debuffs, buffs, CC and mobility to make up for it.
Stats
stats
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General
Health: 380 (+70)
Mana: 250 (+35)
Speed: 365 (+0)
Range: 55 (+0)
Attack/Sec: 1 (+0.8%) |
Regen
HP5: 6(+0.8)
MP5: 4.6 (+0.4)
Protection
Magical: 30 (+0)
Physical: 10 (+2.8) |
Basic Attack
Damage: 35+1.5(+20% of Magical Power)
Progression: None
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Passive - Power of the Anemoi
description
Each ability cast by Aether brings forth an invigorating wind from the heavens, buffing his and nearby allies' power for a maximum of 3 stacks.
Power: 5% per stack
Max Stacks: 3
Radius: 30
Duration: 3s
mechanics
Not much to say about this his passive in terms of mechanics. Since Aether's main purpose is to roam the map and assist his allies, it makes sense for his passive to give them a buff when they're in his presence. This passive activates when an ability is used and affects allies within 30 units of Aether, at which point it will remain active for 3s. This passive also great influences Aether's teamfight potential since his generally smaller AOE abilities gain this additional effect.
1 - Speed of Zephyr
description
Aether channels the power of the West wind Zephyr becoming one with the wind, gaining greatly increased movement speed and giving increased movement speed to nearby allies within the casting radius.
Ability Type: Buff/Area
Affects- Self/Allies
Allied Speed: 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 30%
Channeled Speed: 50%
Channel Duration: 6s
Buff Duration: 3s
Radius: 35
Cost: 60
Cooldown: 15s
mechanics
This ability is the core of Aether's kit. Speed of Zephyr allows Aether to remain incredibly mobile to make up for his lackluster offensive and defensive stats. This allows him to rotate very quickly and gain a semi-global presence, however it can be countered in a fight rather easily. Since Aether must channel this ability, he can be CC'd out of it and is unable to cast abilities while it is active. While this ability does allow Aether to be very mobile, he lacks the jungle clear to become overly dominant in the jungle. This brings his focus back to helping lanes and assisting his allies as any good support should.
This ability's secondary effect is that it gives a movement speed buff to allies within a small radius. This gives this ability an effect similar to a mini
Heavenly Agility, but only really begins to take effect once leveled up.
2 - Gust
description
Aether, empowered by the South wind Notos summons a powerful wind. Enemies hit by this wind are pushed back to the edge of its effect and take damage.
Ability Type: Line
Affects- Enemy
Damage- Magical
Damage- 60 / 80 / 100 / 120 / 140 (+30% of your magical power)
Range:70
Cost: 70 / 80 / 90 / 110 / 120
Cooldown: 10s
mechanics
This ability, while not being the best lane-clear, is excellent for assisting lane clearing. What this ability does is send out a gust of wind in a similar effect to
Tidal Surge except pushing all enemies it comes in contact with for the duration of the ability. What this does is group any enemies hit by this ability in one spot (assuming they don't move to the side since this ability doesn't prevent movement). This can be used to group the melee minions with the back archers, allowing for much easier lane clear with either your suffocate or an ally's ability such as
Suppress The Insolent. This ability is also excellent for gaining added control on enemies' positioning, which is helpful both in protecting your team and as a setup.
3 - Suffocate
description
Aether, instilled with the wrath of the East wind Euros takes away the precious air from his enemies in an AOE. Enemies affected by Suffocate take damage every 0.5s and deal reduced damage for the duration of the effect. At the end of the duration the enemy is stunned due to temporary loss of consciousness.
Ability Type: Ground Target
Affects- Enemy
Damage- Magical
Damage- 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 (+10% of your magical power) every 0.5s
Total Damage- 40 / 80 / 120 / 160 / 200 (+40% of your magical power)
Enemy Power Reduction- 10% / 15% / 20% / 25% / 30%
Duration: 2s
Radius: 20
Stun: 1.2s / 1.4s / 1.6s / 1.8s / 2s
Cost: 60 / 65 / 70 / 75 / 80
Cooldown: 18s
mechanics
Suffocate is Aether's go-to damaging ability and CC. While not incredibly damaging, Suffocate offers a reduction to enemies' power (thus affecting the damage of Hunters more than gods that have higher base damages) and a long stun. Because of this combination of effects, this ability is both a good engage tool and a good tool for pealing enemies off of you and your allies.
4 - Rage of Boreas
description
Aether imbued with the furor of the North wind Boreas calls forth a massive gale. Enemies caught within the gale are slowed, crippled and take damage every 0.5s. Ranged enemies within the gale are disarmed since their projectiles are blown away by the storm!
Ability Type: Ground Target
Affects- Enemy
Damage- Magical
Damage- 20 / 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 (+20% of your magical power) every 0.5s
Total Damage- 60 / 140 / 240 / 360 / 500 (+60% / 70% / 80% / 90% / 100% of your magical power)
Slow- 20%
Duration: 3s / 3.5s / 4s / 4.5s / 5s
Radius: 40
Cost: 80 / 90 / 100 / 110 / 120
Cooldown: 90s
mechanics
Rage of Boreas is what ties together Aether's kit giving him a large AOE ultimate that he can place to greatly influence a teamfight. Aether himself has a few ways to keep enemies within its radius (Suffocate's stun and Gust's push) but this ability excels in combination with allies' abilities. Overall, this ability is an amazing setup, disarming the enemy ADC and crippling and slowing anybody caught in it, but is also incredibly easy to avoid, and doesn't do that much on its own. An
Improved Sprint will allow an enemy to simply run out of its radius and
Greater Purification gets rid of the slow and cripple. Additionally, by itself, this ability does meager damage even at full duration by itself. However, in combination with other CC, this ability can keep enemies trapped for an extremely long period of time and quickly turn the tide of a fight.
Hope you all enjoyed reading my god concept! I'd gladly read any and all comments on how to improve/change it, or anything else you'd like to share.
current personal analysis
Now that I have time to look back on the kit, I can address some of my thoughts on what went well and what could be improved on. Aether's three primary abilities I feel are the core of his kit. They make up his general mechanics and playstyle, and I'm more or less happy with how they operate. His passive, I feel is functional, but not the most interesting. It still has an active effect, but it doesn't complement the rest of his kit that well, aside from the idea that he's roaming the map giving his allies its buff. Aether's ultimate I feel is in a fairly good spot, but it doesn't feel like the core of his kit. While I feel that it's not currently a bad concept, perhaps another kind of ultimate would complement the rest of his kit better. (I considered having his ultimate be a version of his Speed of Zephyr where instead of a channel, it would be a stance change in which he would become wind, gain the same movement speed bonus but be unable to cast abilities, while gaining a different ability for his 1. However, this would be much harder to balance).
One reason I settled on the god Aether is because Rivals of Aether was just coming out for early access on steam and I was hype ^^
ps: that game is really good
Garen is a champion with no resource at all. You'd think that'd make him broken, but not really. I mean, he was a bit overpowered after his rework, but I think he's in a good spot right now, which is nice considering how he was considered a nigh-useless champ a few patches ago.
the whole juggernaut patch was a bit broken for the juggernauts
Soraka is an interesting example because her 4-2 second cooldown (cannot be used on self) heal spends 10% of her max health, and she still uses mana, and one of her abilities (a difficult skillshot, and I mean DIFFICULT) gives back health if you land it on an enemy champion. So you basically juggle your health costs and mana costs, both of which are fairly steep.
Garen is a champion with no resource at all. You'd think that'd make him broken, but not really. I mean, he was a bit overpowered after his rework, but I think he's in a good spot right now, which is nice considering how he was considered a nigh-useless champ a few patches ago.
Dawngate had ALL no-mana Shapers, and those that did use resources had some interesting ones.
Sakari didn't necessarily have a resource than she had two guns with different magazines. Two abilities, each using a separate resource, one which refilled slowly but consistently, one which refilled rapidly but only when out of combat.
Renzo's resource was gained by slapping enemy Shapers (or others with his Q), which only stacked up to five times, but empowered his other abilities at the cost of Five Inspiration. He was a pretty simple Shaper, to tell the truth, but it's easy to adapt this idea of attacking enemy Shapers to get resources into something more interesting.
I know there are a few examples of this in LoL, but I don't personally know how well they pulled it off.
Itemization: How does a item making contest sound? "Create a viable itemization path for squishy supports." As in, create not one, but an entire system of items meant for supports.
Passive: Like...ugh. Okay, I'll throw out other ways to support allies with passives besides bloody power.
1: Tailwind: Aether's abilities and himself leave a trail that increases the move speed of allies.
2: Pressure: Aether's presence (35 feet) lowers enemy minion attack speed by 20%.
3: Slipstream: Aether's allies gain 25/30/35/40/45/50 move speed when moving toward him. Basically a 7% ish move speed buff early, to 13% late.
4: Windfury: Aether increases the attack speed of nearby allies within 25 feet by 10% + 1.5% per 50 magical power. 600 magical power = 28% attack speed, but you'll have to go full squish. This is one example of buffs scaling with power.
5: Vacuum: Aether's damaging abilities slow the enemy by 25%, decaying over 1 second. Copy of Ashabel's passive.
Speed of Zephyr: Well...eh.
Gust: Yeah, thanks for clarifying, and yes, I agree that the combo presented is a problem.
Suffocate: Oh, and the flat power debuff is ANOTHER thing that can scale with power.
Ult: Sadface.
Flow: Glad you liked it. Smite needs more alternate resources.
Overall: I don't really disagree with anything, except for some aspects of Gust which I'll clarify in a brief moment. My mindset for having created the god was obviously that of someone coming from Smite, and thus I did end up creating a god with characteristics like those in Smite. I can see that having not played any other MOBA has limited me in that sense since a lot of the ideas you came up with I found very interesting. But let's get into the nitty-gritty.
Qualifying: I wasn't really sure if this would qualify for the contest, but I had the idea and did it more for my own enjoyment than winning a contest anyway. If it doesn't meet the requirements, I'm okay with that.
Itemization: Items in this concept, were an afterthought at best. Something you seemed to immediately pick up on *heh*. Overall I thought his itemization would involve a branch of
Passive: As I said in my personal analysis, this passive was also an afterthought. Is it about as interesting as other Smite passives? Yes. Is it interesting? No. The only part of it I liked was the lore part since Aether is supposed to be the god of the air of the heavens, and imbuing gods with it giving them a power buff seemed like a good fit there. But yeah, thought I might just try to get a suggestion on a better one since I couldn't think of one honestly :/
Speed of Zephyr: Personally I don't think it's useless in a teamfight. You can cancel the channeling at any time so it would basically be an allied speed buff + repositioning tool for your Gust. As for why it doesn't level up all that well was supposed to be because you should have this tool available from the start, but also be able to level up your 2 and your 3 first making this the lowest priority. Meanwhile late game a 30% speed buff is almost a free
Gust: Oh gust. Okay firstly let me clarify some things: This move isn't intended to come out instantly (has some delay), its speed is meant to be slightly slower than
Suffocate: Flat power debuff I agree with, it makes more sense. Does this ability fit into Smite currently? I think so, it's not really any different from
Giant AOE Ultimate Kablamo Storm: Yeah I pretty much did the Smite go-to for this ability, didn't really have anything for it that was very inspired. Am I ashamed? A little bit yes :C . I do like your idea though, better counterplay and thematic sense.
Flow Idea: Very intriguing, would require an entire overhaul of his kit to make it work (although it would solve the passive problem if 'flow' was it). Also your puns are on point X]
Final thoughts: Honestly I'm not sure whether I liked my original concept more or the ideas you came up with in response to them. Not sure if my thoughts inspired you, but I felt as though your concepts for this god were even stronger and more complete than some of those you had in your Telepath concept. I have to concede that you're stronger in this area of idea-crafting than me but I'm happy to get torn apart to get better :]
I'm not sure if I want to go through and make Aether 2.0 with these suggestions in mind since it would basically require a full rework or leave it here and move on to something else. I'll decide later. Thanks for the well thought out response!
Firstly, as a entry: It doesn't work. Mainly because there's no flying involved. Your character has a AoE buff, a knockback, a AoE slow, and a AoE stun, and a weird speed buff. A good rule of thumb is, "can this character be someone entirely on the ground?" If yes, then it doesn't work. Aether might as well be a groundbound dwarf with a giant electric fan, is what I'm trying to say.
Yes, he has wind powers and can move fast, but that's not really flight. It's probably my fault - I didn't specify the terms enough.
On a conceptual basis, speaking as a support mage, you made the mistake of giving this guy literally zero incentive to build power. His scalings are low, his base damages are low, and you might as well label him as a ranged tank, because that is what his kit enourages.
There's no kind way to say this: I think your inexperience in other MOBAs is hindering you here. The idea behind every the squishy support is that their support-y-ness scales best with power, not protections. Or in other words, doing stuff more effectively is better than being able to get closer and taking damage for longer - something your kit fails to do.
So in the end, I think I should really just examine your kit on an individual basis, regardless of itemization, before talking about its performance in the theoretical metagame.
On an individual ability basis:
His passive is terrible on multiple levels. Not only is it literally an AoE He Bo passive that works the exact same way, but it once again reminds me of how HiRez cannot think of supporting as anything but "CC and/or damage increase/decrease." It also has the potential to horrifically snowball on certain gods (such as He Bo). Worst of all, it has zero player interactivity other than you mashing buttons.
Suggestions? Drop it. Scrap the entire thing.
Wind Thingy: This is a really interesting ability that is somewhat flawed in execution. I get that its meant for rotations, but its effects are too broad and unfocused (or focused weirdly or unevenly). As a rotational ability, it doesn't really get anything per level at all, which is a problem. As a speed buff, it's almost impossible to use in a fight (nor would you ever want to channel for six seconds when there's abilities to be used). So that basically means this'll be a dead ability whenever you teamfight, which I find...off.
Overall, there's little difference at all in leveling this up, which I don't feel is good.
Suggestions? Narrow down this ability into something more defined and focused, and I suggest (although there's not strictly speaking a problem here) making it more useful in a teamfight. Hopefully the scaling problem will be resolved along with it.
Gust: This ability is the main reason why Zephyr will ALWAYS be built tank with this ability as is.
Smite's items are frankly ****ed up, and I think blink is one of the most oppressive, horrifying anti-counterplay items there is, and this guy would love Blink and tankiness, because being pushed back 70 feet is crazy.
This is the best peel in the game, the best knockback in the game - it may not have a stun or anything, but in terms of sheet distance, nothing beats this ability - Ymir's 2.25 second stun, assuming you run away after it lands, gives less distance than this. Blink behind an enemy, push them into tower, dead - it's like a Sobek pull, only it's faster, hits multiple people, can also be used for peeling, can't be blocked, goes further, AND has a shorter cooldown. Do you see the problem with this? You wouldn't be able to kill anyone with a Aether standing nearby, because you'd get pushed back further than any gap closer can gap-close.
Suggestions? The concept is fine, the execution needs work. It needs some kind of drawback for a powerful effect, and slapping on a 18 second cooldown will make me very, very disappointed in you, Zilby. There are many ways of doing this, many different levers you can pull or push, but you need to create those levers first.
Suffocate: I am not a fan. I do not like this ability at all. I was fine with it until I realized that it is NOT a delayed zoning circle that people could walk out of, but an instant debuff AoE that ends in a massive stun.
I don't like unavoidable AoE stuns, especially when they come with percent power debuff (another one of my peeves). It's like you're being punished for doing better than Aether - a flat power dbuff is better, scales better with the early game, and is usually more complex (because attack speed would interact with it differently).
Suggestion? Go back to the drawing board on this one. The concept itself - a delayed, but unavoidable AoE stun with radius and range - is a problem. You need to add avenues of counterplay or limit its effect - actually, I need to talk a bit here.
How should I judge these things? Honestly, if this champion, as is, was implemented in Smite right now, It would blow the pants off of every other god in terms of originality, and with only a few balancing tweaks (talking about a slight numbers change, no reworks), it would probably be "balanced" as well.
But personally, I can't stand that. If I had to rate Smite's gods, all gods, barring
PERSONALLY, when I rate these things, I want to rate them based on my standards of fairness and fun, not HiRez's twisted sense of a good game. So I can't accept this ability. My mind just rebels against it. I just can't.
So speaking from the viewpoint of someone who wants counterplay, you could make it a tethered ability. Aether slowly suffocates a target, breaking leash if out of range, gradually slowing them, stunning them once the debuff comes to max stacks. (Example: slow by 6/7/8/9/10% per stack, stack and damage every second, stunning them for 1.25 seconds and breaking the effect at six stacks, 15-11 second cooldown, 40 foot hook range, 55 foot leash range.) Don't underestimate the power of the fact that it is a targeted ability (essentially countering mobility) - in this case, because it's a single target effect, you could afford to increase the damage. You have more room to breathe, balance wise, due to that restriction.
Rage of Boreas: Nope. Nope. NOPE.
The damage is weak. The slow's weak. The duration scaling could be a bit different. None of the previous three are deal breakers when tied to a proportionately powerful effect. But the disarm...
This is almost Weakening Curse, if it Disarmed enemies instead.
You don't NEED a giant AoE ult to "tie things together." Another damaging misconception spawned by Smite, and the one who invented it needs to be spanked in public in front of his coworkers, friends, and family on live national TV.
This is a case of overspecialization - it's brutally, horribly unfair to a relatively small slice of gods, and it still ruins gods like Fenrir and Serqet. I mean, it essentially has all the problems with all the other big AoE CC ults. (Also, I'm not sure what you were thinking by making all of his non-ult abilities ranged. It's as if you just slapped on a "Smite Guardian ult" over a basic kit.)
It might be fair to "screw over certain characters because they don't give a rat's ***" HiRez, but not to me. You get in, ult, and suddenly ADCs are practically useless. You could build entire team compositions where Aether ults in any teamfight and the enemy is basically fighting a 4v5. Something this big can't be dodged, either, nor does it seem to have a delay or some other form of counterplay.
Suggestion? I'm honestly surprised you didn't think of this: make all skillshots AND leaps/dashe veer in the wind toward your right. Or alternatively reduce the range of all skillshots/leaps/dashes within the tornado by 25%. THAT evenly affects all characters (nearly everyone has some ranged abilities and or leaps in Smite, if not ranged basic attacks), it makes thematic sense, its consistent, but its not overpoweringly powerful. Best of all, it's truly unique to Smite, where autoattacks are skillshots. This keeps the flavor of the original but tempers it.
As I said before, this god needs only a few tweaks to be perfectly fine in Smite.
Perfectly fine in Smite does not equal acceptable to me.
I've been a judge for two contests now, and I'm still unsure on what kind and how much feedback I should give. Is it unfair for me to give suggestions and criticisms before contest judgement? Is this just another form of nepotism? I don't know.
Overall...I think this kit has a bunch of neat ideas, but also a bunch of bad ones. It needs refinement, retuning, and in my opinion, some rethinking in some areas as well.
PS: Typed this over a period of a few hours while in the middle of the night. I might have derped somewhere.
I don't have time to comment on this now, but I'll promise to take a look at it. Just letting you know I'm alive and aware.
Yeah no problem man. I'm not in a rush lol, it's the weekend.