User blog comment:Commander Marko/Mirage, the Arcane Zealot/@comment-1330314-20150828153230

There's a lot of stuff here I really like! The Arcanum mechanic is especially awesome, and there's a ton of potential to Last Stand. However, I think there's a lot more that could be done with your basic abilities, which don't look especially enticing. Here are my thoughts on your kit:
 * Arcanum Deposits is a brilliant mechanic, and I think it could produce a ton of interesting gameplay. Marked, on the other hand, doesn't stand out nearly as much, and I think you could just scrap it completely. Instead, I think you could actually seriously buff Arcanum Deposits as a result: perhaps remove its availability upon killing multiple minions, but instead allow it to function on large monsters and have them regenerate and  every second while Mirage is consuming them (and perhaps make Mirage consume them over 3 seconds instead of 2). That way, you'd create points where Mirage would be able to quickly restore her resources before darting quickly to another combat location. Since she'd be static for the duration, it might be worth removing the movement speed bonus here and placing it elsewhere, particularly since you have a lot of other sources of mobility.
 * Arcane Assault doesn't look that especially cool or powerful, and there are just so many dashes out there that do more interesting stuff. I'll get to Shift further down, but I think you could remove the shield here completely (it's not particularly strong, especially not for a conditional effect), and instead focus on making this ability really good on its own. Perhaps increase the range, reduce the cooldown, remove the slow and make Mirage carry the first champion she hits along with her: since she's a junkie trying to get her fix out of champion kills, it would allow her to single out potential victims, and as a really kill-oriented dive fighter it would allow her to perform really powerful ganks and picks for her team. Perhaps, as a result, you could also make Mirage only damage the first champion hit (but still damage all minions and monsters) and deal a lot more damage to that target.
 * Shift is a mechanic with a ton of potential, but the effects you've added to it are a bit bland. Its on-hit damage could be made a lot more interesting, the range boost doesn't like a good fit at all for a dive- and all-in-heavy tanky champion, and the conditional effects don't stand out as much as they should. Here's what I propose to preserve the damage, tankiness and mobility on this ability:
 * Move Mirage's mark effect here: have her abilities energize enemies, and cause Mirage's next basic attack against them to deal bonus magic damage (perhaps even scaling with missing health, too), consume all marks (so that it would be most effective against individual enemies and not groups, and would also concentrate the effect) and grant her a bonus based on the toggled effect.
 * If you want to keep the tankiness, have Shift: Close Quarters grant Mirage a shield based on the damage dealt.
 * If you want to keep the mobility, have Shift: Hit and Run convert the damage into a flat movespeed bonus for the next few seconds (you could make it decay in case it's too strong).
 * As with Arcane Assault, Runic Railgun is a bit bland, and as a ranged pass-through nuke it really doesn't look like a good fit for a melee fighter. Seeing how Mirage gains huge bonuses upon killing individual targets, you should probably turn this into a melee ability that would allow her to mug enemies better. For example, you could make this ability a lot more close-ranged and have it stop at the first enemy hit, but also make it push all nearby enemies away from the main target (sort of like Last Stand's current effect).
 * I love the idea of Mirage's ult working with arcanum, as it could bring a ton of amazing gameplay and, just as importantly, would really blend her theme perfectly into her playstyle. The Arcane Rush effect is a part of that too. However, I don't think the active itself is as good a fit, even if it would be powerful. I'd say ditch the active, make Mirage's ult only usable on deposits of arcanum (but massively reduce the cooldown at all ranks), ditch the bonus attack speed on Arcane Rush (it doesn't look like the most interesting stat on her, and would only work due to a fairly weak on-hit effect), but instead expand the arcanum deposit to cover a vast area and last a lot longer, while also providing Mirage with massive cooldown reduction within (you could make the area, duration and CDR increase with rank, so that late-game Mirage could enter URF mode while in her zone). Seeing how this ability would be more focused on getting super-high off of a takedown and not a last defense (Mirage doesn't really feel like the honorable defender type), you should probably also rename the ability.

At her core, Mirage has an awesome potential niche, and I think has all the tools (plus the theme) to be a really strong, really energized fighter (or assassin) with really powerful highs and lows, as befits her theme, and most of her core mechanics are either pretty solid or utterly fantastic (everything pertaining to her arcane junkie fantasy in her kit is phenomenal). However, there are also some effects on her that just feel weak and not that unique, when I think they could be retuned to be a lot juicier and more consistent with her junkie theme.