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Durza, The Shadow Mage

Lupus Dirus·2/3/2019, 6:01:14 PM·1 votes·1,553 views

Shadow Mage Background:

Nocturne - Bio

Towards the end of the Rune Wars, desperate for victory, cabals of warrior-mages sought any advantage they could find over their foes. Although no record names the first of them to cast off their flesh and enter the spirit realm, it is known that they came to stalk one another not only on the battlefield, but in landscapes shaped by their own subconscious thoughts and emotions. Unconstrained by the laws of physical reality, they fought in ways that more mundane minds could scarcely comprehend, even conjuring subtle, etheric assassins to do their bidding. Shadow mages seemed particularly skilled at such things—and so it was, for a time, that they came to dominate the spirit realm, casting it into twilight.

After the Rune Wars, what little remained of the lore of shadow magic was hidden away, and its practice carried the sentence of death in many lands. And it remained hidden until now.

Durza Background:

Durza, like many mages of Demacia was an outcast and forced to hide his "aliment". As a young boy Durza and his family were traveling from Fort Wrenwall to The Great City when their Wagon was attacked by Raiders. Durza, in fear to protect his family let out a burst of his magical energy, creating a swarm of shadows engulfing and killing the attackers and leaving drain husk of what they used to be. Durza's parents looked on in horror at their son, but swore to keep it their family secret. Durza and his parents headed back to Fort Wrenwall instead of going to The Great City but soon rumors started to spread of what happened on the road and the bodies that were discovered. Mageseekers were sent to investigate the incident and soon began asking questions in the region.

When Durza's parent heard Mageseekers were doing an investigation they packed up their home and escaped into the night, but they were followed. In the early morning the following day the Mageseekers surrounded their camp and demand that the mage turn themselves in. Durza's mom moved to protect Durza as his father attacked the Mageseekers. Durza's father was quickly struck down and his mother didn't last much longer. Durza in anger, grief, and desperation unleashed a wave of shadows, draining the mage seekers of life and leaving gray corpse in his wake.

With nothing left for him in Demacia, Durza ran until he came across and old ruin in the Argent Mountains. Deep within the ruins he discovered text to Shadow Magic and decided that he would learn this magic and strike down all who have hurt him.

30 YEARS LATER: Word reaches Durza of a Mage Rebellion in Demacia. With his now controlled power in Shadow Magic, Durza sets off from the Ardent Mountains to strike fear and destruction in the hearts of all who oppose him.

UPDATED: Description: Durza is a Shadow Mage, he has the ability to alter reality and the spirit realm when conjuring his spells.

Passive: <unknown at time of post>

Q: Shadow Swarm: Durza cast a cloud of shadow that does AOE DMG in a small area draining HP and Mana/energy from Minions and Champions inside the Swarm

Q: Spirit Walk- Chaos Swarm: Creates a massive wave nightmarish creatures and launches it forward doing high levels of AOE Damage and a AOE Fear

W: Hallucination: Durza makes his opponents nightmares a reality. Small AOE field around targeted enemy champion creating copies of the enemy champion (the clones do no dmg) to disorient where the next strike will come from

W: Spirit Walk- Ethereal Strike: Shadow Assassins spawn and charge at enemy champion.

E: Hands from Below: Durza uses a Skill Shot AOE to create a slow field with Shadow hands coming out of the ground, after 2-3 seconds will snare the enemy champion in place. Dmg on Hit and Final Snare.

E: Spirit Walk- Puppet Master: Based on how low the HP of an enemy champion is, Durza is able to take control of the enemy champion and use their abilities ( not summoners) and auto attacks to strike their allied units. The lower the enemy is the longer it will last. From 5-10 seconds. A Shield will be created on the controlled champion; once the shield is destroyed or time runs out Durza loses control of said champion.

R: Spirit Walk: Able to walk in the Spirit Realm with Spirits and Demons, Durza becomes ethereal and becomes invulnerable to reality damage and all but invisible and able to walk through obstructions. Takes increased damage from "Demon" Champions. Last 15-20 seconds. After casting another ability Spirit Walk goes away in 2 seconds.

Just an idea, let me know what you guys think.

8 Comments

Reksee2/4/2019, 12:51:14 AM1 votes

I feel like "demons" attacking would be way too complex. How about you take x amount of damage per second if you stay for y seconds. And maybe other invisible or camouflaged enemies can see you as invisibility for extended periods of time seems a little too powerful.

ChaosReyn2/4/2019, 8:20:49 PM1 votes

Hmmm...how do I put this in a way that doesn't seem like I'm bullying you...

  • He's completely reliant on his W, cause his Q is basically Morgana pool - people will just immediately walk or dash out and you essentially did nothing.

  • While in spirit form, he's "being attacked" ...so in short, he's taking damage over time that increases the longer he's in spirit mode (like swain's old ultimate costing increasingly more mana per second the longer it was on, only with hp instead of mp.) correct? It also changes his form to essentially be invisible (not camouflaged) but constantly rippling every second due to constantly taking damage in spirit mode. To be fair, utilizing the ripple effect in that way is interesting and new...however...

  • Regardless of how that W mechanic works, being invulnerable to enemy damage and untargetable for that length of time while still being able to affect the enemies is really unfun and extremely hard to balance. There's no counterplay other than to live long enough that he has to drop the W, and murder him while he's useless and at pathetically low HP...until then though, you have to stay away or risk being a puppet or getting yeeted by a literal ghost spamming its E.

  • Being able to take an ultimate is one thing. Being able to forcibly use someone else's ultimate, and have it affect their allies, is a completely different thing, and that on it's own is already overpowered. Being able to not only burn someone's ult cooldown, but burn it as you impact the wrong team with it, is absolutely ridiculous. That's not even counting being able to waste all their other abilities, their resources, and attack people for what seems to be an undisclosed amount of time that I'm assuming is longer the lower hp they have. In that regard, if you're controlling someone, and that someone is at low hp, you're also having their allies kill their teammate as counterplay, which is very unfun, and guarantees tilt no matter what.

  • Lastly, shadow magic right now is being utilized by Zed and Kayn, with Kayn having the ability to walk through walls and enter a person much in the way you're describing his W and his ult. He even drains people's life (though that's technically Rhaast) similar to how you describe. While Kayn is obviously a fair and balanced champion (hint: that's heavy sarcasm, cause I freaking hate that guy) about the only way to make him even worse is to make him completely freakin immortal while he does it, and give him the ability to control his ult target...and that's pretty much how I feel this guy is. He's a bit less mobile than Kayn, but makes up for it by only taking damage from his own W, which is pretty much negated if his Q "drain" is like spellvamp or lifesteal by just making the puppet you claim stand in the middle of your Q while attacking. So I really don't even get a feel of originality from this guy, I more feel like you're trying to take Kayn, re-skin him a bit, and see how much more op you can make him before people want to punch out their monitor from the shade of it all. I also feel like that joke is arguably better than this concept in playability.

Psyrix2/4/2019, 9:11:42 PM1 votes

Lol is this a reference to the Inheritance Cycle character Durza the Shade?