User blog comment:Poisonshark/Custom Champion: Taoh, the Bringer of Fear/@comment-1330314-20160903234927

There are a lot of things I like about Taoh. Having a melee champion operate like a proper marksman, beyond just scaling really well with autoattacks, is an interesting idea, and you've executed that idea pretty well. My main criticisms, though, are that you could have made several effects more interesting, and that you didn't quite deliver on the "bringer of fear" fantasy, at least not on paper. Thoughts on Taoh's abilities:
 * Fear Empowering's passive is pretty cool. I like that you've encouraged Taoh to line up multiple targets at once, and in fact I recommend you even make Fear Empowering grant the full 5 Fury per champion hit, and then either reduce or remove the returns against small enemies (I also recommend you make the cooldown universal, rather than on-target, since the AoE nature of the ability means you can still strike the same target multiple times and render the restriction meaningless). The Fury system itself, though, feels incomplete: you have a few effects that scale with Fury, but no way to consume it in-battle, which is a missed opportunity for a high point. Instead of a champion that builds towards some really powerful effect, e.g. or  transformations,  empowered abilities,  remount, or even  heal,  bite or  resurrection, your champion just gets gradually more powerful... and that's that. Considering how your champion's meant to specialize in fear and has no basic ability that fears enemies, perhaps you could try to include that in some form through a Fury spender.
 * Dark Pressure's alright for a bread-and-butter ability, but some aspects of it are a little off to me. I'm personally irked by magic damage/AP scalings on champions clearly meant to specialize in physical damage and AD, and putting that on his most basic nuke feels wrong. The range increasing with Fury also doesn't feel very appropriate or conducive to clarity, especially since this is mainly intended to be a trigger for Fear Empowering, an effect with a limited 550-unit range (which is significantly lower than Dark Pressure's base range, too). I recommend you change this ability a little, perhaps try to tie it better into Taoh's power of fear (perhaps this could situationally spend Fury to fear a target and/or apply some other rare bonus effect).
 * Deadland Walker really doesn't appeal to me. A raw AS/MS steroid wasn't particularly interesting on old and it doesn't look like it really does anything to complement Taoh's theme of fear, nightmarees or chaos. It helps him maneuver better for target line-ups, and that's it. On top of this, the multiple separate conditionals don't look all that conducive to power appreciation, particularly since the Fury scaling has some degree of anti-synergy (this is the kind of steroid you'd activate at the start of a fight, even if you just want to power up your autoattacks, but it only reaches maximum effectiveness after you've fought for quite a while already, though it's difficult to gauge the ability's uptime because its cooldown is currently missing). I recommend you find something completely different, ideally more unique and closer to his theme, that also makes him more marksman-y, and not just in the sense of having a lot of personal steroids.
 * Chaotic Knuckle looks like a ton of fun, and is really original. Usually, an ability that knocks champions away substantial distances wouldn't work well on a melee character (unless they're ), but with Fear Empowering it works perfectly. I'd recommend changing the follow-up effect a little (the true damage is a bit much, the stun isn't that interesting for an ability that already deals a lot of initial CC): for example, instead of having a single shot that deals true damage and stuns, perhaps you could have Chaotic Knuckle reset Fear Empowering's cooldown and have Taoh shoot every marked target in quick succession, which would work with his chaos theme and the ability's spread (targets would move away from each other, so they wouldn't get hit multiple times).
 * Aura of Domination is kinda meh. The Fury scaling just masks the fact that you essentially get up to bonus AD, and as with Deadland Walker anti-synergizes with itself (you want this at the start of a fight, but only make the most of it after a lot of fighting). The bonus damage is redundant relative to the AD steroid, and the fear effect only pops up here, so basically every 60 seconds, when it's a core part of Taoh's theme. Perhaps Fear Empowering should only activate at 100 Fury, but fear everyone it hits as part of Taoh's innate. Perhaps Taoh's abilities should fear enemies in some circumstances or interact more with fear. In either case, it needs to be core to his kit, and not just one component on his ultimate. This needs to be redone, as there are much more interesting and theme-fitting effects for a champion intended to be a terrifying, chaotic Shadow Isles warrior.

There's a lot of potential to this kit. Chaotic Knuckle and Fear Empowering are especially original and fun abilities, and if Taoh's entire kit were on that level of novelty and quality you'd have a legendary champion on your hands. However, right now there's a lot to Taoh that feels fairly generic, including his lore ("mysterious creature on a rampage scares everyone"), and you need to dig a bit more to make his unique themes and playstyle truly come out. How does Taoh embody chaos in a way that is unique to him? How do you represent his innate ability to inspire fear? What kind of force of nature does he represent, and how does that translate to his gameplay?