User blog comment:Lesdin/Maria, the Astral Keeper/@comment-3391671-20160814234740/@comment-27802145-20160815052037

Firstly, thanks for the compliments regarding the lore! It's always good to hear affirmative feedback from a variety of people.

As for your overview of Maria, you've hit the mark perfectly. Maria's character is supposed to be a hostile boss from Bloodborne, but the way she plays out in this kit is more akin to the actual player of Bloodborne. Player hunters in Bloodborne hit hard and fast, with a heavy emphasis on aggression, rather than reactive passivity being placed upon the players by the game.

Now regarding your criticism/remarks regarding the kit, I will proceed to reply to them in bps to ease progression.


 * I: I can understand where you're coming from regarding Maria being the bane of ADCs late game, but I also disagree with your proposal of increasing the CD. Maria is centred around her capability of dodging anything in which is ranged, be it targeted or not. This is Maria's defining strength, which is countered by her weakness of innate vulnerability in base stats. If the need be, then I'd happily increase her weaknesses to offset her strengths, but decreasing her strengths to match the calibre of her current weaknesses is something I refuse to do (sadly though, I see Riot doing this very often in their champions, despite them supporting the idea of definitive strengths/weaknesses).
 * Converted projectiles behave as per normal, as in they can hit other units as well, including both minions and champions. As for the cooldown, it does not refresh.
 * Q: Maria's innate cannot function as intended without her dashes, which in turn cannot also cross over walls. In realistic circumstances, it would be nigh impossible to use this to its maximum potential, and hence I believe it is balanced, though by gimmicky devices.
 * W: Basically what I've said about the Q. To be outdone by this ability in realistic circumstances would mean that you had simply allowed Maria to do what she does best against you. Playing around this would be just as, if not more simpler than playing around, say, Darius, or Riven.
 * Hunter's craft is an ability dealing physical damage in an aoe like Yasuo's Q when used under the specified conditions. If it did function like an AA, I would've listed it so, along with it applying on-hit effects.
 * E: Me having written is just me writing in a style which conforms with the Wikia's "way of things". If you go on Fiora's page, you can see that her E is said to deal bonus crit damage, when it is in fact reduced. You could argue that I could've implemented flip text for clarity, but flip text looks ugly.
 * R: I totally agree with you thinking "something doesn't sit". Reason being is that I think that too. But purely logically thinking, the numbers aren't overtuned or anything, as they are current max health, with the bonus being applied over 2 seconds (and unless stated otherwise, dots from the same source do not stack).
 * The "200 + original range" is the range of the bloodfire tracing each attack. Due to the delay, it is not guaranteed that you will be struck by a stream of bloodfire, even if you were to be hit by the preliminary attack. It will be easier for you to understand if you watch a gameplay video of the boss, but basically, after an attack is made, an aoe is made about the attack which deals magic damage, with its range being "200 + original range" of the source attack.
 * The cooldown was intentionally made short. I wanted there to be an emphasis placed on the health cost, rather than the actual cooldown of the ability. This supplements Maria's identity of a perpetual threat weaving in between projectiles and dealing short bursts of moderate damage. Due to the lack of mana costs, Maria can indefinitely deal out considerable damage, if on an opposing team, but due to her lack of any concrete defences, she is also easy to just stomp out as a team. This means that if Maria is not focused during the preliminary stage of a teamfight, or zoned out (she is almost entirely melee), the enemy team will face the consequences.