See the new talents and abilities for your self

Interview with Lead Balance Designer on Azmodan and Raynor Reworks

October 7, 2014 marked the date on the calendar that the Lord of Sin, Azmodan, worked his way into the nexus to starting raining chaos down on his opponents.

As the game evolved, his kit did not. He soon fell out of any competitive play and now sees use by those who enjoy wielding his arsenal for funsies.

Blizzard intends on putting those days behind him as his kit was re-worked in order to spruce up his outdated abilities and give him new tools to use going forward.

Stafford “McIntyre” McIntyre, a pro player from HeroesHearth Esports, joined InvenGlobal recently to discuss the changes to the wide-bodied demon lord and if his bite can now match his bark.

Stacking Q’s is in style again

Similar to heroes such as Nazeebo and Kel’Thuzad, Azmodan is alongside them when it comes to how they have operated in the past. The early game is spent farming stacks on minion waves and heroes until they reach their goal or point in which they become effective. From there, they are able to operate at a level of competency to compete with other heroes in team fights or trading within lanes.   

“Azmodan needs time to become effective and even when he does become effective he’s only doing so much is really his main issue and why you don’t see him in competitive so much. He does the damage but his ability to make ‘the play’ isn’t really there.”

With a deep hero pool existing within the competitive scene, you need to stand out in one way or another. Currently, Azmodan doesn’t do that but McIntyre does notice a couple design features within his new kit.

“I like how they’re trying to make using the ‘E’ not feel like a burden it seems. Right now he plays like, ‘Throw Q, back up. Throw Q, back up’ but with this change it feels like you can throw your Q then E and if you get that off you can talent into it.”

His E talent (All Shall Burn) has been given new functionalities with a set mana cost (30) opposed to it continuously ticking and draining mana the longer the channel lasts. Additionally, you can now cast one of his Demon Warriors (W) while channeling All Shall Burn to provide some flexibility.

His most popular playstyle is also being tweaked which could make the Lord of Sin’s damage ramp up much sooner than his former self.

“The other thing is that they said, essentially, is that stacking Q is cool. I like that they have introduced that to the base kit because I do think that was one of his most fun mechanics”

His Globe of Annihilation now becomes with a baseline quest attached to the ability from the get-go. The quest itself is: Hitting Heroes and killing minions within 1.5 seconds of being hit by Globe grants 2 stacks of Annihilation. Each stack of Annihilation increases Globes’ damage by 1, up to 400. Warning splat is now created earlier in the ability cast. Range decreased from 35 to 30 and the Cast time is reduced from .75 -> .5625 seconds.

He also gets a new Heroic Talent in exchange for his widely-used previous one, Black Pool.

Naturally, his new level 10 ability helps boost the effectiveness and strength of his Q. Tide of Sin, the new Heroic, has you “Activate to cause your next Globe of Annihilation to cost no Mana and deal 50% more damage.” It also has a 30 second cooldown.

It will be interesting to see how Azmodan is now built and played based off the tweaks to his basic abilities. Will we see players just try and stack Q all game similar to before? Will there be a viable E-build to wither opponents down while healing yourself? The opportunity is there but it is up to the users to decide what they find most enjoyable and viable.

New look, new problems?

While there is optimism in terms of how his abilities function now at a base level and how they can be talented as the game progresses, that’s not to say there aren’t hesitations.

“One thing that really worries me is they got rid of Black Pool,” said McIntyre, “For me, Black Pool was pretty good. So, he has a lot of auto attack talents now and at first, I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to work really well with Black Pool, right?’ I think people don’t realize that Black Pool increases all your damage as Azmodan so if you Black Pool into Sin’s Grasp into Q then auto-attack you hit really hard so I’m not sure how I feel about that but it is nice that this new ultimate is going to remove the mana from your Q.”

In addition to his Black Pool ultimate being removed, Azmodan experienced a 10% drop in base health and his health regeneration took a hit as well. Previously, his massive health pool, one of the biggest in the game, made his survivability a nice perk for selecting him against auto-attackers opposed to percentage-based damage dealers. Now that’s reduced quite a bit.    

“He’s kind of like Chromie with a ton of health and it’s unfortunate that they now hit his health and even his health regeneration because he doesn’t have utility to get out once he is in,” said McIntyre, “For me, his perk of being big and lumbering was that he could sustain damage, that was his signature thing, but I think the reason that they did that here is because there are talents that heal him when he casts his E and the scaling of his E on his old health pool would have been too oppressive.”

In total, Azmodan saw 11 talents within his old tree be removed completely for unique ones that will, in theory, provide a greater deal of playstyle and build variety.

Mcintyre isn’t so sure, however.

“I think his strategy is still a bit linear, in not a bad way but a Specialist way,” said McIntyre, “In that Specialists are designed to have that posture, wave clear and siege kind of play style.

At the end of the day, the Lord of Sin’s new kit will be judged based off his effectiveness in being able to team fight at high-level play and the freshness and excitement that is felt selecting him in Quick Match or other game modes.

Time will tell whether the changes in place are what the hero needs to return to the spotlight, similar to recently re-worked Lunara, but at face value, it’s a step in the right direction for the shirtless spider demon.