Hi folks! This is my first time posting on the concepts forum. I used to be very involved in the suggestions forum on DOTA back around 2006-2007, so ever since I started playing LoL about a year ago, I've been wanting to get involved on some hero design.
To start off with, I decided to create a hero based on a character I'm sure some people are familiar with. I've been a fan of the Slender Man mythos for about a year and a half now, and with the popularity of the fan-made 'Slender' game, it's picking up in interest. I decided to for my first LoL hero suggestion, I'd create a champion inspired by Slender Man. Obviously it's not a complete copy, since Slender Man as he is wouldn't suit the aesthetic feel of LoL, so I'm taking some creative licencing with his name, design and appearance. That said, all his moves have drawn inspiration from the source material in one way or another.
So without further ado, I hope you enjoy!
[CENTER]Anon - The Faceless Stalker[/CENTER]
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Lore Many things come from the Void, whether they are created from it, or are simply mutations of things that already exist. Anon came from the Void, but no-one knows how it was created. Some say it was a kidnapper or assassin who stumbled upon a gate into the Void and was twisted from its power. Others say it was a born from the Void itself, trying to manifest into a human form. The answer remains - and will probably remain - a mystery. Anon stalks the lonely countryside and city alleys, picking off its prey one at a time. Its mere presence is enough to terrify, but it seems to take delight in letting its prey know that it is nearby, poking it's head around corners, or hiding in dark spaces where it will only be glimpsed in the corner of its eye, and vanishing before they can react. If that isn't enough, Anon is imbued with a host of terrifying paranormal powers that can literally sicken a foe or cause them to even forget who they are. This all leads up to Anon striking and achieving his true goal: abducting his foes and taking them into the Void with him. 'The Void's intentions manifest in this marvelous creature. Succumb to its wiles so you may die with your sanity intact.' ~ Malzahar 'This thing is twisted, sick...it only gains pleasure from the suffering of others. Like all creatures of the Void, it must be destroyed!' ~ Kassadin |
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Appearance Anon appears as a tall, elongated (you could almost say SLENDER!) humanoid creature with pale skin. It's face is featureless, save small, round indents where its eyes and mouth would be. It doesn't appear to be wearing any clothes apart from a pair of dark green briefs. While shaped like an elongated human's body, however, hardly anything else is normal about it. Its skin is twisted and gnarled in places, like there are muscle spasms, growths or deformities all over it. It walks with an unusual gait; it keeps relatively upright, flaunting its full height to those around it, but its upper body swings back, as if it's struggling to keep it in perfect balance. This is certainly not the case though, as it is fully capable of taking hits that would knock most off their feet. Some say it's mere presence is enough to pervert the laws of physics, enabling it to keep its feet firmly planted on the ground. |
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Roles Melee Assassin Jungler Stealth |
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Stats Health: Below Average Melee: Average Ability Power: Above Average Difficulty: Average Health: 425 (+85) Health Regen: 6.5 (+.7) Mana: 205 (+40) Mana Regen: 7 (+.6) Range: 175 (yes, that is slightly longer than the average melee; think Wukong) Attack Damage: 54 (+3.2) Attack Speed: 6.5 (+2.7%) Armor: 15 (+3.5) Magic Resist: 30 (+1.25) Move Speed: 320 (quick note - I am TERRIBLE at numbers, particularly when it comes to general champion stats. Just assuming if this were ever to go into development, Riot would balance the numbers accordingly. So know when reviewing this that I just got a short list of champions I believe are close to the stats I wanted for Anon, and balanced them out accordingly) |
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Abilities Stalk (Passive) Description Anon is a master predator who quickly tracks down a foe, and slinks off into the dark when he has dealt with them. Effects Anon gains 25% movement speed when it's not in vision of enemy units. If Anon kills or assist kills an enemy champion, he becomes invisible for 6 seconds until he attacks or uses an ability, with a 2 second grace period that causes him to fade back into invisibility if he breaks it within that time. Notes - Neutral creeps do not count as hostile creatures until attacked. For this reason, Anon's passive will not fade until he engages with them. If they are hostile, he loses the movement speed buff. - Enemy wards WILL make you lose the buff. The same goes for unseen enemies, such as stealthed units or those hiding in the brush. However, this can work to your advantage; if there are seemingly no nearby enemies, but you loose your movement speed buff, you know there's either a ward or enemies hiding nearby. [Q] - Paranormal Sickness Description Anon can cast a supernatural disease upon his foes. The disease causes the infected target to break into a violent and bloody coughing fit. Effect Target foe is inflicted with paranormal sickness. Every 2 seconds over the course of 8 seconds, the target is stunned for .2/.2/.3/.4/.5 seconds and take magic damage (scaling with AP) per second (that's four stuns and 90/135/175/215/260 damage total). Each stun reduces the foe's armor by 4/6/8/10/12. This effect stacks up to a cap of 5, and each stack lasts 3 seconds each. Mana Cost: 90/100/110/120/125 Cooldown: 12 seconds. [W] - Amnesia Description One of the most terrifying things about Anon is that you may not even remember you encountered him. Passive Effect When Anon auto-attacks a foe, or if they do damage to him, they gain a stacking debuff that increases the cooldown of their abilities by .2%/.3%/.4%/.5%/.6% of the ability's maximum cooldown per stack, maximum of five (total 3% of maximum cooldown at max level with full stacks). Abilities already on cooldown will have their timer increased for each extra stack. Active Effect Target foes in an area around Anon take 80/115/160/200/225 and are silenced for .8/1/1.2/1.4/1.6 seconds. The passive effect is disabled while the ability is on cooldown. Mana Cost: 70/80/90/100 Cooldown: 9/9/8/8/7 Range: 250 Notes - If a foe has reached 5 stacks of the passive, then subsequent attacks from or to Anon will not further increase the duration of abilities already on cooldown. It will, however, refresh the time on the rest of the debuff. [E] - Spatial Displacement Description Anon defies the laws of space and physics, allowing him to warp between short distances. Foes who witness this displacement are briefly incapacitated as their mind reels from such a perversion of reality. Active Effect Anon teleports to a location in a range of 600. If he appears in front of an enemy champion, that champion is stunned for 1/1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5 seconds. Mana Cost: 50/60/70/80/90 Cooldown: 15/13/11/10/9 seconds Notes - Anon must appear in front of a foe to get the stun; think Cass' ulti, where foes must be looking at her to trigger the extra effect. [Ultimate] - Abduct Description When its target's sanity has been completely destroyed, Anon uses its elongated appendages to drag it's victim back into the Void where it came from. Active Effect Anon grabs a foe in a 350 range and drags them towards it. Anon and the target then vanish from the map, and Anon does 300/450/600 damage (scaling with AP) over 2/2.5/3 seconds. Abducted foes lose all line of sight from their allies while abducted. When Anon returns, the foe is slowed by 20% for 3 seconds. If need be, Anon can end the ability early by pressing the ability button again. Mana Cost: 120 Cooldown:150/130/110 Notes - - Anon and the target become physically un-targetable while in an abducted state; they literally vanish from the map for the duration. - Only the abducted foe loses LoS; Anon keeps it even while vanished, at least his allies'. - If Anon kills a foe while abducted, the ability automatically ends, no matter how much time is left. If he kills a foe, he returns in an invisible state due to his passive. - If Anon returns early, the foe is still inflicted with the full duration of the slow. |
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How to Play Anon Using Abilities Anon, like many other ganking/assassin-type champions, is best played as a jungler. His naturally fast movement speed enables him to move through the jungle exceptionally quickly, set up ganks on the fly, and even counter-jungle very effectively, being able to move in, steal opponent's buff, and move out again before they even know you're there. While jungling, Paranormal Sickness enables you to When ganking, you will usually either engage with Spatial Distortion for a surprise attack, or run in, use Paranormal Sickness to slow your foe over time, and use Spatial Distortion to chase. If you decide to warp in with Spatial Distortion, try to get your ally in lane to force them to flee. That way, you can warp in front of your foe, get the stun bonus, and then have sufficient time to wail on them as they run away. Late-game, Abduct is your bread and butter in team fights, and makes you an invaluable asset for removing foes from combat. You can either use it to finish off fleeing foes, nabbing you a kill and giving you free invisibility for when you return, or you can use it on a tank or support to temporarily remove them from the fight while your allies beat down on squishier foes. If Abduct is down, try to at least grab an assist so you can get your invisibility to chase a foe or get in position for a strong offensive. Remember you can use Amnesia to silence foes in an area around you; just make sure you don't put yourself in too much danger to do so, especially in range of carries who won't be put off by the silence. If a foe starts running, cast Paranormal Sickness on them to help your team catch up. Item Builds Anon uses a combination of physical and magical damage, and as with similar assassin characters, this means his item builds can go one way or the other, or a mix of both. As always, cross-stat items such as Trinity Force, Guinsoo's Rageblade and Hextech Gunblade are good all-around items. Anon is more durable than some squishier assassins, but not much. Try to get items such as Trinity Force, or Frozen Mallet if you're going a physical damage build, if you need extra health. Life steal from items such as Wriggle's Lantern or Hextech Gunblade will help give him some sustain if needed. |
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Quotes and Voice While ideally I believe Anon shouldn't have true dialogue to keep with the exceptionally creepy feel of the hero, and because traditionally Slendy is a silent antagonist, I understand Riot puts a lot of investment in characterization when designing their heroes. While I believe it would be possible to do so without giving him dialogue, there has yet to be a hero who doesn't have one, and I feel there's a specific reason for that. I won't speculate to the reason, but regardless, I won't be the one to break the tradition. Much like other Void characters, Anon's voice would doused in effects such as reverb, delay, pitch-shift and phasing. However, to mix things up a bit from the usual deep, booming feel of most Void characters, I believe Anon should have a high-pitched voice; something that sounds almost like a woman screaming, but androgynous enough to believe it could be either gender. Anon's tone would be something that sounds like it is suffering, or that it is terrified, but it would juxtapose heavily against an assortment of creepy, violent, stalker-ish quotes. For the gaming-inclined, imagine sources such as the witches from L4D, the Redeads from the N64 Zelda games, Majora's second and third forms in Majora's Mask, and the banshees from Warcraft 3. Upon Selection "I come for them!" Movement "They will lose everything!" "They shall know I'm near." "Their anticipation drives me." "They wait in fear." *downplayed creepy laughter* Attacking "RUN!" "It is already over!" "There is beauty in your suffering." "The Void has you!" *loud, insane/creepy laughter* Taunt "You cannot hide! You can NEVER hide!' "The question is not 'how?' or 'where?'. The question is 'WHEN?'!" Joke "Slender-who? Never heard of him!" "I just want a hug. Why doesn't anybody understand that?" "I only follow you because I LOVE YOU!" Recall *hissing* "I'll be back for you!" "You think I'm done with you? *insane laughter*" |
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Skin Ideas Slender Anon - The obvious one! So you're probably wondering why I decided not to have Anon have Slendy's trademark suit and tie. Well, simple: it didn't fit the lore. A paranormal creature from the void, in a fantasy setting, dressing like Barney Stinson? That doesn't make sense! As a bonus skin, however, it's easily doable. Ender Anon - Why not go the whole kit-and-caboodle and give Anon a skin based on a Slender Man homage? Ender Anon would be completely black, and it would have glowing purples orbs where it's eyes and mouth would be, like Enderman. It could even have the glowing purple effects on it. |
I've tried to encapsulate a number of elements of the Slender Man mythos into the character design; his ability to disappear, appear, and move extremely fast seemingly at will, the violent coughing fits, the amnesia, and of course, the fact he abducts children (or in this case, champions). This is a rough design, and I've tried to make the abilities as interesting and unique as possible, but I feel it could definitely be better.
I'm really happy with the ideas for Abduct and Amnesia, so I doubt they will change much. Paranormal Sickness, as I'm sure some DOTA players have picked up on, is heavily based on one of Enigma's skills, so if it's too much the same and/or too blatant, I'll try and mix it up.
I feel the ability that will need the most design improvement is Spatial Displacement; at the moment it feels like a bit of a generic flash/blink/warp ability with a gimmicky stun. I have some ideas on how I might be able to improve it, but I want to see what people think of the overall design first.
While I partially did this because I'm a fan of the Slender Man mythos and thought a Slender Man-based hero would be cool, I feel this could be worked into a very well-designed hero, so I am very open to constructive criticism and suggestions. Especially if you're a fan of Slender Man, feel free to draw out inspiration from other aspects of his character or the mythos for ideas. If I directly take anything from your ideas, or if I heavily base them on your ideas, I will credit you accordingly =)
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Edit List 1.01 -Increased the duration of Paranormal Sickness from 6 seconds to 8 seconds. Made the stun trigger every 2 seconds instead of every 1.5 seconds. -Lowered the silence duration on Amnesia from 1/1.3/1.6/2/2.5 to .8/1/1.2/1.4/1.6. -Abduct's duration reduced from 4 seconds at all levels to 2/2.5/3. |
