User blog comment:ZPPHR/Evan/@comment-1330314-20150214060423/@comment-1330314-20150215195432


 * While Evan's gameplay should definitely mesh with his lore, I'd still place gameplay over lore consistency: a champion with healthy and fun kit, but who doesn't mesh with their lore, is at least fun to play with and against, and can be adjusted easily. A champion whose gameplay is artificially constrained by their lore is going to be problematic to balance and develop on. For example, kills literally everyone on the planet when sung, so technically Karth should be able to ult minions and jungle monsters too, but that would obviously break him and/or force his ult to be extremely diluted.
 * I think it would just be better to move the damage reduction to One Minded, particularly since you're already giving your Host a defense buff (splitting the same kind of steroid across multiple parts of one kit tends to make the effects less readable and individually strong, as is the case for and 's attack speed bonuses). Mind Read doesn't contribute much here, and putting aside teamfights, for most of the laning phase this is just going to give 6% - 12% damage reduction, which isn't that visible. If you really want Evan to read someone's mind and dodge their abilities, you could perhaps make him do it in a more visible way (e.g. "Every few seconds, if a projectile fires at Evan or his Host, it is briefly slowed before hitting him, allowing him to move out of the way"), but right now this is an effect with only a small amount of flavor and not that much interesting gameplay.
 * Apologies, I mixed up the name with that of the Priest ability from World of Warcraft (and the Hearthstone card of the same name). My gripe with this is that, despite its seemingly awesome damage when double-cast (also, why double-cast it?), the individual damage per projectile is just incredibly weak, and when Evan's not connected to his Host it wouldn't do anything for his kit. I think it would be better to just concentrate this into a single projectile with perhaps less overall damage but a useful effect of its own, than just have it be a generic nuke. I also think turning it into a skillshot from the very beginning would be better: not only would switching from a targeted ability to a skillshot be weird in terms of player interaction, it would also make the ability harder to land when you're supposed to be empowering your Host. If it were a skillshot from the very beginning that gained an empowered effect, it would play a lot more smoothly (you'd have the same targeting paradigm all the way through). Straight-up point-and-click nukes also just tend to be not really interesting or full of interaction. I also think this is the one ability where you can afford to debuff an enemy, rather than empower Evan's Host, because this is the most offensively oriented ability in Evan's kit.
 * You're likely right about the perma-stealth. However, I think it's possible to have this effect scale with AP in some way. For example, you could move the Host's bonus damage to the base effect (i.e. you and your selected ally deal bonus magic damage on your next basic attack upon breaking stealth, or just release an explosion), and still keep the Host's on-damage stun.

It's also great to see how you're establishing the mind vs. matter distinction between Evan and Nate, and I think there's a ton of potential for reinforcing that on Evan's kit. You picked Mina as a source of inspiration, and I think the X-Men's Professor X could also factor into his design (Mind Sense is basically Cerebro/Cerebra in ability form). It's a pleasure to see a kit with such strong grounding, and I look forward to seeing how he develops, along with any new hunky dudes you have in the works. ;)