User blog comment:Rowtuh/Depth, the Mirror of Potential/@comment-94.8.210.211-20120330224812/@comment-1618239-20120331001823

Thank you for the extensive critique! You didn't indicate what you felt about me responding to what you say, or your intents to monitor this page, so I'm going to use this reply as if you're interested in commenting more (and if you're not, then I doubt you'll ever even read this - having posted using an anonymous account, and thus not following the page - and that's fine with me, especially considering that your first post was already so intensive).

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Backstory: This was intended to bring forth three things. First, he believes that he's a brother, and nobody else does (bringing doubt of the character to mind); second, that he's been searching for and manipulating secrets, implicating both emotion and summoning magic; and finally, that he believes he's the only one with the right to say they have the truth (again inspiring doubt).

The character mostly sprung out of a concept that there was a twin universe, and someone got a glimpse into that twinned universe, with its extra rules. I'm not sure how to express it in text. Nonetheless, 1. only a tiny fraction of players read the backstory, 2. I agree that it should be rewritten.

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General reasoning: Of particular note, the character's ultimate doesn't have an AP ratio, which is unusual for an AP carry. Also, his Q (0.56 per 2s) deals less damage than the Q of Karthus (0.6 per 1s) or the E of Cassiopeia (0.55 per 0.5s). Even during his ult, he does less potential damage per second judging solely from items (his passive tweaks this a bit). It's also potentially harder to land his Q than either Lay Waste or Noxious Blast. Finally, Karthus has Q and E, Cassiopeia has Q and E, while Depth mostly only has Q. Since he has lower AP ratios, he has two steroids (his innate and his ultimate), and slightly higher utility.

Innate: I was debating with myself whether 105 AP was too much for an innate. I intentionally made the numbers very high in order to provoke my thought on the issue. This is probably one of the more important parts of the character, so it should be tweaked to precision. I feel like it's rather hard to keep yourself at 105 AP, but if you add the "give free Truth stacks on his ult" clause, I'd definitely nerf the innate itself. He's designed to have a warm-up time before a fight (somewhat like another of my designs, Monarch), though this one is less brutal. I think that this and his R (his two steroids) are the ones that need the most consideration.

Also, remember the passives of characters like Karthus, or Morgana; up to consideration is Viktor's passive giving him 54 "free" AP, possibly giving an additional AP ratio to him as well. Ezreal's passive gives him 50% AS after casting abilities, which roughly equals-in-gold 50 AD, and AD is approximately twice as expensive as AP. The levels of synergy can be debated between the two but Depth clearly would have more difficulty keeping stacks up even as an AP caster than Ezreal would as an AD carry.

Q: This is Karthus Q, except it can be blocked by minions, it has twice the cooldown, it has less range, it costs far more mana, and it gives him stacks of his innate. In fact, I was previously inclined to think this ability was exceptionally poor and needed a major buff, especially since it seems like it would be his main source of damage output. It does play differently, a lot more like Ezreal/LeBlanc had a child, but stat-wise I think it's underpowered if anything.

W: It's a tiny AoE (250 diameter). It probably is no larger than Xin Zhao, spear end to butt. Realistically, I suppose, the only reason it's AoE is to prevent spell vamp from giving 100%. Also, I'd be more worried about the waveclear potential than the slows, because the ongoing slow is like Cassiopeia's Miasma but doesn't last as long (3 second duration - 7 second duration), and the instant slow (the only one that affects attack speed) lasts for a total of 1 second. The character design of giving him an AoE ability is an interesting point, but I had it in my mind that its defining trait was more realistically how short it lasted.

I do somewhat like your ability idea though! In my head, I had thought it was troublesome to have an AP caster that only has 2 abilities which deal damage, instead having an innate, W, and R that each buff those 2 abilities. However... Gragas also exists... and he mostly uses Q for damage, and usually uses E and R for utility (though he can use them for combat as well). I... find myself rather enamoured with this concept. He doesn't really need two sources of CC, nor did I like the idea that he has 2 abilities which in concert give him ridiculous waveclear. I'll have to think about it.

E: Casting spell range is from the centre of a character, which is generally said to reduce the range as compared to an autoattack by 100. Ergo, Caitlyn instead outranges this ability by 50. Speaking as an AD carry main, I find it more rare than I feel I can describe for me to outrange any caster at all, even as Caitlyn. I suppose, though, that the range of 700 may be a little strange for a cone. I hadn't looked much into cone-size spells (and in retrospect, can only name a few - Kassadin, Cassiopeia, Annie are the first to occur to me - Mordekaiser too, I suppose), so maybe this range is off. However, the mana cost is clearly obnoxiously wrong for how much it actually does. It should probably be a flat cost.

R: Not to try to beat your points, since I do feel they have validity, but for an example that shows it has been done in the past, LeBlanc's ult scales "backward" to 0 mana. The idea with the mana scaling is that, early on, you could activate this but then possibly not use it to its fullest extent because your mana pool was only so large. I feel like this idea is flawed, though, and will probably implement a sort of mana inversion between E and R.

On the other hand, I feel that scaling the duration as 6/9/12 is too extreme with current ult-steroids in mind. As an example, Vayne's ult is 8/10/12. Doubling the duration between 6 and 16 could throw new players off (as opponents). However, I do believe that the duration could easily be 8/10/12, 8/9/10, or 7/8/9. Your point is valid, I just disagree with the particular numbers you chose.

Regarding cooldown reduction, Cassiopeia has an E with a 0.5 second cooldown. The difference is that it starts at level 2 rather than at 16, and the cooldown reduction happens every time she lands her basic harrass ability instead of every minute during an ult. It happens more often than her autoattack and has a 0.55 ratio instead of 0.56. Statistically I have to entirely disagree on this point, for probably the first time in this post. [Also, they do keep track of percentages, up to 0.01%. This has been tested with at least Amumu, and possibly Deathfire Grasp.]

The armour/MR and spell vamp seemed tacked on to me as well. I just wasn't sure there was anything better to replace them with. I particularly disliked the armour/MR and if I'd given myself even 20 seconds more to think about it I would have removed it on the spot (and will potentially go do that as soon as I post this comment). The spell vamp seems somewhat appropriate. Maybe they could be replaced by something to do with mana, or sustain - possibly a passive effect.