User blog:Emptylord/Blogs/Horde (Gears of War) game mode

Some of you may remember a poll that Riot ran a while back for what future game modes players would enjoy, and (I think) the most popular result was something similar to Gears of War's Horde - wave after wave of minions (including bosses) until you lose. But how would you add strategy to minions? Or rather, what AI could you give minions to make them better?

One of the people I'm following on DeviantART just uploaded a visual upgrade to one of RuneScape's Pest Control monsters, which I completely forgot existed. I've got to say: I was inspired. You can check out the artwork: [gnomewillow.deviantart.com/art/Pest-concept-The-defiler-388517543 here].

We know that the Void is supposedly orchestrating an invasion - so this is the perfect game mode! A map where there is a single Nexus and enemies are spawning in waves of ever-increasing difficulty, with periodic bosses and other such.

The typical objective of this sort game-mode is to survive as long as possible, with the eventuality of losing. However, as with RuneScape's Pest Control, there could be a win objective in the form of "destroy the portals". Perhaps ever so-many waves, the portals weaken enough to destroy them. I'm not sure which variation on the theme I prefer.

But anyway, back to the main question: how would you make the minions more engaging?

In Runescape, there's the basic melee and ranged minions (like Dominion, one big melee minion); ones that have the ability to blink; healers that are also have unreasonably high health but cannot attack; Garens (aka spin-to-winners), etc. And if we look at existing void champions: "Riftwalker" and "Artillery" would make two good roles.