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[CHAMPION CONCEPT] Nephry, the Dark Crusader

Yousonerfed··3 votes·2,037 views

This one's been worked on for a while, so hopefully a red will take notice.

Nephry, the Dark Crusader
http://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/1230541
(picture is a reference to her appearance)

Statistics (subject to change)

HP: 420 (+85)
HPR/5: 5.5 (+0.5)
MP: 240 (+33)
MPR/5: 5.5 (+0.5)
Damage: 55 (+3)
Range: 125 (melee)
Armor: 19 (+3.5)
Magic Resistance: 30 (+1.25)
Attack Speed: 0.625 (+2.02%)
Movement Speed: 340

Abilities (balance suggestions are appreciated)

Last Update: Jan. 15, 2014

P - Curse of Retribution

Every fourth hit Nephry takes from basic attacks, she will perform a counterattack, dealing 10+(5 X level) physical damage to all nearby enemies (200 range). The damage also scales off 40% of Nephry's armor and magic resistance. This effect cannot occur more than once per second. If Nephry does not take damage for 6 seconds, the hit counter resets to 0.

Q - Guilty Blade

Nephry's next basic attack releases dark power from her blade all around her, dealing 25/50/75/100/125 (+0.2 AR) (+0.2 MR) physical damage to surrounding enemies (225 range) and slowing them by 20/25/30/35/40% for 1 second. Each autoattack that hits Nephry reduces the cooldown of Guilty Blade by 0.5 seconds (minions and monsters reduce by half this much).
10/9/8/7/6 second cooldown. Costs 35/40/45/50/55 mana.

W - Aphotic Soul

Nephry shields herself for 7 seconds, absorbing up to 100/145/190/235/280 (+10% bonus health) damage. While the shield holds, Nephry's basic attacks will cripple her targets, reducing all physical and magical damage her target deals by 20% for 2.5 seconds.
18/17/16/15/14 second cooldown. Costs 70/75/80/85/90 mana.

E - Malefic Strike

Nephry releases a blast of darkness in target direction (skillshot, max. 700 range). If it connects with an enemy, Nephry immediately dashes to the target, dealing 60/100/140/180/220 (+0.4 AP) physical damage and taunting it for 1.25 seconds.
13/12/11/10/9 second cooldown. Costs 70 mana at all ranks.

R - Heart of Darkness

Passive: When Nephry is taunting an enemy Champion, she ignores 15/20/25% of their bonus armor. (Bonus armor refers specifically to armor granted through: runes, masteries, items, auras/buffs and champion abilities.)

Active: Nephry tethers herself to all nearby enemy Champions, slowing them by 20% while tethered. If the target(s) do not break the tether within 2 seconds, they are dealt 150/250/350 (+0.8AP) magic damage and are taunted into attacking Nephry for 2 seconds. While taunted this way, enemies deal half damage with their basic attacks to Nephry.

140/120/100 second cooldown. Costs 125 mana.

Background

"One must be wary of their own sins, lest they become as vile as the ones they fight." - Nephry

Few Demacian heroes have as tragic a history as Nephry. Cursed to bear an ancient black sword, and feared by the people who once called her a hero, the knight holds an uneasy vigil over the people of Demacia, fighting as best she can for justice with the dark power she is condemned to wield, whilst simultaneously fighting the very power that threatens to corrupt her.

Nephry's endeavors began when she was sent to reinforce an ancient temple in Demacia under siege by Noxian forces. The Noxians sought an ancient Darkin blade sealed away within the temple named Ebonmere, a cursed weapon of great and terrible power. Her forces were hopelessly outmatched against the Noxians and, in desperation, Nephry took hold of the very weapon she was charged to protect, hoping to use its dark power to save her comrades. Upon breaking the seal, Nephry cried out as the sword's curse took hold of her, turning her white armor ebony and her blue eyes a deep crimson. Seconds later, she found herself in the middle of a horde of dead Noxians, covered in their blood. She had singlehandedly won the battle, but could not remember a moment of it.

Despite warnings from her comrades of the sword's curse, she could not compel herself to abandon the blade, and opted to keep the Ebonmere and use it to further Demacia's cause. In battle after battle, Nephry led her forces to numerous victories against Noxians and bandits, each battle ending with her regaining consciousness amid a pile of fallen foes. Yet with each victory, her men grew more and more fearful of her, her bloodlust unnerving even the most experienced soldiers. Though she claimed to be hunting down the enemies of justice, many feared that she was becoming as vile as the ones she hunted, sparing no foe regardless of the weight of their crimes.

On one day, Nephry was met by Prince Jarvan IV, who wished to congratulate her on her successes. As the prince approached her, Nephry lashed out at the prince, the Ebonmere drawn as she claimed he was to be judged and punished for his crimes. The prince, accompanied by Garen Crownguard, squared off against Nephry in battle, the fight eventually dragging to a standstill. But just as Nephry was about to renew her assault, she suddenly stopped her rampage, regaining her senses. Believing that the Ebonmere's curse had corrupted her, Jarvan sought to destroy the blade. Yet Nephry protested, claiming she could control the weapon, and herself, if the prince would give her the chance. Jarvan accepted, but demanded that Nephry seek the aid of the Summoners, and warned that she would not be spared if the curse took a full hold of her. Nephry departed for the Institute of War that day, seeking to conquer her demons before they conquered her.

Trivia

  • Nephry "taunts" her opponents by directing her own darkness into her foe (via the Ebonmere). This darkness briefly overtakes her foe, sending them into a frenzy.
  • Nephry and Jarvan IV were rumored to be romantically involved in the past. Neither will comment on this, but it's pretty obvious. ;)
  • Nephry and Quinn are good friends, even though Nephry is a noble.

You guys like? Comments and suggestions are appreciated.

20 Comments

Nitrogen1232 votes

DrMundo theres gotta be mundo in her lore. Cant have alore wthout mundo.

Yousonerfed1 votes

Sorry, no Mundo. This is a Demacian story, not a Zaun story.

JediBear1 votes

I like the idea, might need some balancing, but I can very much say she would be a tank I would play.

Rhyto1 votes

Not bad, I'm sure her ultimate would require an all stat boost for the "Bloodlust" part of it. Any unique skills to bring up instead of copying the old ones?

Ketsuekishu1 votes

A few things:

  1. Your link is stated to be unsafe to view; if you wish for players to view it move it to a safe website (may be due to the fact that the community site is still in beta).
  2. As Rhyto has stated; most of this is abilities that are already on champions in the League. (Nephry's Ult is Morgana's and Galio's ult combined; taunts are already difficult to balance in-game and you decided your champion needs 2 taunts?)
  3. The lore is quite long; I have the same issue when I am writing lore for a character. If you read up on the background of all the characters most of their introductory is under 300 words (I would say averaging at about 250 words); while yours is nearly double the average. I do not blame you for this as I believe in order to have a deeper and more compelling story for each character; it needs to be about this length. I am not sure if Riot keeps them short for some specific reason; but if I was able to change their standard of having at least double the word count for their lore - I would make it so.
  4. I am seeing this champion to have Garen Syndrome but version 2.0; as your champion stands now, she can build full tank and have his damage along with more CC than Shen. Your tank would devastate the current top-lane meta.

These are just some of my thoughts; I hope you do not think I was too hard on your champion. I myself have been working on a custom champion that I still feel is not up for community view; don't give up, make some tweaks and try to study all the champions so your abilities do not resemble other champions'.

Yousonerfed1 votes

Nephry's always been a challenge for me to make. It's hard to balance a physical damage tank without making it OP or making it become a bruiser.

There are some severe flaws to Nephry, though.

  1. She does nothing against high-health opponents. Her ratios are on the lowish side, and armor still does hurt her damage output.
  2. Nephry's regeneration early is TERRIBLE, both for health and mana. This makes her easy to harass and outlast in lane situations.
  3. Comparing Nephry to Garen and Shen is kinda unfair. Garen actually stomps on Nephry because he can outlast her, while Shen has a global teleport, which necessitates that he have a weaker basic kit.
  4. Some of Nephry's abilities are modified from older ones, yes, but other Champions have done this as well. Nephry isn't unique in this.
  5. Nephry's got a complex story that actually isn't fully explained just by her background. But going into full detail would take MUCH longer.

That all said, I'm still looking at ways to curb her power. Only problem is, I can't directly test her since she isn't on PBE or something like that. :(

Ketsuekishu1 votes

For some reason in the edit box everything is properly numbered (1-5) when I submit all of them become (1.,1.,1...) I have no idea why this is happening.

Sorry for taking so long to respond to your post; as I said before I hope I was not too harsh on your champion and hopefully I can give insight on your points you have made.

  1. She seems to be a cast based tank; her ratios may be low but with her great amount of CC allows her to have allies come in to take down champs with large amounts of HP.

  2. I was able to balance her using about 24 points in the defensive tree and 6 points in utility (might I mention this is all in a builder; I used Rammus as an example in this builder as a lot of their stats are quite close to each other.) I found her to be quite like Rammus as in between all the CC she is able to harass like Rammus through Auto-attacks. She has the issue that Rammus had in season 2 where he could taunt and wreck an auto-attack based champion; while nullifying most damage done to you. (Build Thornmail and watch as a Master Yi or Tyrn autos themselves to death.)

  3. Maybe it is kinda unfair of me too say she could pub-stomp as easily as Garen; the point I was trying to get across is champions like Garen and Shen can build mostly defensive and gain near immunity while being a great peeler as well. Nephry's current setup could be terrifying if she was used as a support. (Her level 6 rotation would probably take down any bot lane comp even if a jungle came to aid.)

  4. Can't do much about having similar abilities; as it is because we are inspired by work we have seen. My recommendation would be to change only the ult; it is a real bummer to see it as two champions ults combined into one. Also as I have stated before; 1 taunt is powerful, 2 taunts is godly.

  5. I always love hearing a long and compelling story; I too have a champion where my lore "intro" is well over 1000 words. That is quadruple of the average amount and I still felt I could not explain the full story. I broke it down though to about half the amount; I still believe it needs a lot of work, if I could have my way I would want Riot to double of even triple the amount of lore on every champion. (I hope to bring this point forward on a post I will be making tonight, look for it on the main website; this community beta and I also wish to show it to players on the EUW and maybe East as well.)

I wish we were able to somehow implement our characters in-game for a test run; the best way is if you have some talent to create your character and run it on a offline based MOBA (such as Demigod, Dota 1/2), in the end you still would not get the feelings as if they were in the world of LoL. Take your time though, the best thing you have done is allow players to give you insight on your thoughts (you even took the extra step to put it on Riot's website instead of some fansite; why is there so many fan-creations on places like lol.wikia if it reduces the amount of people to see it?)Keep on working on it; in no way am I saying to completely scrap your idea, my major concern is listed in point 4.

Yousonerfed1 votes

Actually, I just got Meddler to answer a question on whether double taunts are a good/bad idea on a Champion. Here's what he said:

Wouldn't personally consider it inherently toxic, whether it's good design would depend on what reason you had for wanting multiple taunts (as opposed to other CC types) on the kit though. Taunts give you varying effectiveness against different roles, less effectiveness when doing poorly, the ability to somewhat reposition the target and increased accessibility to effects that trigger when your champion is hit. If it's appropriate that a champion doubles up on CC that fits those criteria (and almost certainly some others I'm forgetting) then sure, two taunts might be a good choice. Not something I'd expect to be a common situation myself, not an inviolate 'never do this' rule though.

http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=44358256#44358256

Seeing as Nephry really needs those taunts to help trigger stuff in her kit, I think having 2 taunts is pretty necessary. Yes, her ultimate is a composite of Morgana's and Galio's ultimates, but I needed to make it that way.

See, Nephry's ultimate used to work like Leona's Eclipse, in that it charged up for a short bit then hit all enemies around her, damaging and taunting them. However, I found this would have poor counterplay, as she could prime it early, Flash in, and opponents would be unable to dodge or react to it. Making it work on Morgana's tether style gives your opponents the ability to do something about it (i.e. knockbacks, Flash). This allows me to alter the ability's strength much more freely, since counterplay exists.

Ketsuekishu1 votes

It was nice to see that post by Meddler; as he explained 2 taunts is not that toxic but for your champion here is why:

You are like Rammus but have the engage capabilities of Leona. So your early game glory moments will be at LvL 2, 3 and 6. Let us focus on your level 6 engage at this time: Let us say you have Nomad's Medallion or Targon's Brace and a Healthstone. Your engage combo should be something like: W>E>AA>R>AA>Q>AA, in this you should deal about 400~ damage single-handedly; while easily locking up any enemy with two taunts. Your taunts do not gain duration (which is a good thing) but your peel with your combo becomes exponentially better at the same glory points as Leona: (Early game 2,3 and 6; Mid game at 11; Late game at 16.) Suggestions might be to remove damage gained from tanks stats (Just the AR and MR; the shield with bonus from HP is ok.) Increase the damage a little on Q and E; change the AR and MR gains to AP Ratios. I hope this info is found useful.

Yousonerfed1 votes

I suppose I could remove the AR/MR ratios on her E and replace it with AP, but I need to keep them on her Q or it doesn't scale. I don't want to give her Q AD scaling because I don't want Black Cleaver or Last Whisper to be at all viable on her; this creates a weakness for her in that she lacks sufficient armor penetration late-game.

If necessary, I'll lower the ratio on her Q, but not remove it.

Ketsuekishu1 votes

It's a good start; dont have much more to state, I think I have detailed all of my points. You do not need to reduce the ratio on Q (it does pretty small amount of damage); removing it from E and giving it an AP ratio is a good way to shift some power.

XxTSwiftxX1 votes

I don't know how you feel, but I think you could persuade Nephry players to build more armor and magic resist if you buff the scaling ratios on her Q ability because the E and R abilities do pretty high damage and even more with the high ap scaling. This would probably persuade people rather to play her as AP rather than tank.( I think we all know how this went last year with Janna[SO OP])

It's only my opinion so you may choose to deny it but atleast think about the main role the champions is/supposed to be standing up on.

Rhyto1 votes

Wow, thanks man :o I'll make up my full critique to at least respect the champion as well.....^^;

DMC750011 votes

Another great champion by an awesome author! This is interesting! But, the passives seems kinda damaging. Now, champions will be probably using abilities to do damage without harming themselves. However, does it also affect other abilities that count as basic attacks such as Yasuo's Steel Tempest or Vi's Denting Blows?

Other than that, nice work! Upvoted, and don't forget to take a look at my other champion, Khamsin! :)

Yousonerfed1 votes

I don't know how Steel Tempest works in that regard, but Vi's Denting Blows counts as a basic attack IF Vi procced it with an attack.

As for the passive, one thing most people don't realize is that to use her passive, Nephry has to take damage. That is a big tradeoff at times.

TheBonkvich1 votes

I like her lore, but I don't see it represented well enough in her kit. her kit shows a warrior who has mastered a dark power, and uses it for good. Where's the struggle? Where is the waking up after the battle to carnage with no memory? Additionally, a tank doesn't need a taunt to make people attack her. Her shield alone makes her a target, and her carry killing potential makes peeling her a priority. instead of giving her a teamfight ult ala morgana/galio, why not press her carry killing side. I would suggest an odd sort of ult.

Heart of Darkness

Passive: Nephry ignores 10/15/20% of enemy bonus armor. (Bonus armor refers specifically to armor granted through: runes, masteries, items, auras/buffs and champion abilities.)

Active: Nephry begins to focus on a single enemy, automatically moving toward and attacking target champion. all of Nephry's abilities will automatically target this champion. Any other enemy champion who approaches Nephry will take damage and be feared for a short time (this effect cannot affect the same champion twice in a short period). Additionally, Heart of Darkness' passive will ignore the targeted enemies total armor instead of bonus armor.

Having taunts Doesn't really match her flavor Imo. A fallen knight wielding a demonic blade would inspire fear (as shown in her lore). This Ult is much more flavorful, though im unsure how well it would play in game. self CC hasn't really been explored in champions.

Yousonerfed1 votes

The struggle is that she hasn't fully mastered that dark power. It still very much threatens to corrupt her. Nephry's quest is to either free herself of the Ebonmere's curse, or master its dark power instead of letting it master her.

As for her taunts, this isn't explained in her lore, but I have thought about it. Basically, what Nephry does is that she sends her own darkness through the Ebonmere and into her foe, causing it to overtake them briefly and send them into a rage.

Besides, no one ever explained how Rammus taunts enemies, right? "Okay."

Fifth Scheme1 votes

There are two issues, potential problems, that I see in your design.

  1. Lore. There isn't much that differentiates Nephry from Aatrox and your story contradicts her kit. For one, your story revolves around a possessed blade, an offensive symbol, while her kit revolves around taunting, shielding, and counterattacking, a defensive symbol. While Aatrox's lore suffers from the expectation of a support character and the realization of a melee carry, your lore suffers from the expectation of a melee carry and the realization of a tank.

  2. Gameplay pattern. Nephry's gameplay pattern is inherently frustrating to play against because not only are you punished for attacking Nephry (her passive and Q reward taking damage, but if that's not bad enough, the damage you deal to Nephry is reduced by 20% AND you have to break her shield, while she be builds purely tank items because her abilities scale from health and resistances, which further increases the strength of her shield), you are forced to attack her because she has two taunts. I'm not saying that two taunts are inherently bad, but that if you have two taunts, it might be a bad idea to punish people who attack her when they're not taunted.

What I'm worried about is that Nephry would gain too much free damage by only building tank items, making her Shyvanna 2.0, hell even 3.0, because free stats are hard to appreciate and understand when you are fighting against that character.

That said, I appreciate the detail and consideration into creating a cohesive kit where each ability is carefully thought out and synergizes with the other. I don't think you have a problem there.

The design goal and gameplay pattern might be something you want to iterate on and decide what exactly you are looking for from Nephry, and how to communicate that in a way that makes sense to players who will be fighting against her without making it unfair for people who are trying to attack her. There should be some risk involved in deciding you want to taunt their ADC or Mage, and creating inherent damage reduction and counterattacks invalidates that risk for Nephry and merely frustrates the opponent.

My suggestion is to play with damage amplification on Nephry when she taunts to free up her power allowance into other areas of her kit. Right now her taunts are foolproof and force you to butcher her ratios so she doesn't get out of hand.

Yousonerfed1 votes

Interesting. Damage amp if Nephry taunts an opponent is possible, but what I think could work better is if she gains strong armor-penetration against taunted targets. This way, it's not so much damage amplification so much as she ignores the defenses of tanky opponents. This way, she won't mutilate squishies.

As for her lore contradicting her kit, I like her story, so I can't really change it. Not everything is explained, however. I want to save some explanations for something like a fanfic. As for comparing her with Aatrox, her blade IS of Darkin origin, but she's more similar to Varus than Aatrox.

Yousonerfed1 votes

Made a change to the passive portion of Nephry's ultimate. It now ignores more bonus armor, but now only gives her that bonus penetration against targets she has taunted. This takes away free power from her, necessitating that if she wants to deal full damage to her target she has to CC it.

Also, since the passive only ignores bonus armor, it is far less effective against opponents who stack high health or who haven't gotten any armor to speak of. So she's not going to do that much more damage against an unarmored mage or a ranged carry.

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