Scryr, The Mindmancer (I'm no mathematician so don't expect numbers, just my idea.)

Vyrrix·7/31/2017, 12:35:42 AM·4 votes·792 views

Scryr is a mage who can manipulate minds and TURN the tide of battle.

Q: Influence- Scryr toys with the mind of an enemy minion, convincing it to fight for his team's cause and flipping it to join his minions. (The death of this minion will yield no gold to Scryr.)

W: Doubt- Scryr pries at the doubt of the enemy champions. He then shrouds himself in the manifestation of it, briefly causing the next enemy champion ability that would damage Scryr to instead damage the caster for the exact damage he would have taken.

E: Thoughtsear- Scryr imposes the idea of pain directly into the brain of an enemy champion/minion slowing them and causing damage over time.

R: Weak Minded- Scryr focuses his ability to turn an enemy champion to his side for a brief time allowing him limited control. (Auto attack and movement control similar to the likes of Tibbers, Shaco's clone etc.) During this time enemies can inflict damage and crowd control on their turned ally.

Passive: Likewise- Damage caused by a controlled minion/champion will award Scryr with 1/2/3 gold per successful auto attack made on enemy champion/minion.

11 Comments

Psyrix7/31/2017, 1:01:18 AM3 votes

lol, the doubt ability will either have to have a long cooldown, a stacking/windup sort of mechanic (like Aurelion's e or kassadin's e), or reflect a reduced amt of damage. (providing it is kept as a basic ability). ur also prbly gonna want to adjust some of these to be skillshots so some measure of counterplay is possible

MuffledGarbage7/31/2017, 3:44:18 AM3 votes

Your idea is very solid and has a clear identity in mind, here are a few balancing suggestions.

If you want to make Scryr a minion-mancer but he steals enemies(or jungle creeps, after all imagine having a mind-controlled gromp come out of the jungle to attack for you) that's what I'm going for with these suggestions

Passive: Change the current passive to be a passive on his ultimate, so he has a well sized powerspike at level 6 because with his kit he has almost no powerspikes.

New Passive: When Scryr attacks, all mind-controlled units will:

  1. move faster towards the target

  2. do more damage towards the target

  3. take more damage from the target

  4. give extra experience to Scryr when they die

Have this passive scale with level and now Scryr is on the way to minion-mancing

Q:

Change Q to a charge system because otherwise it'll be overbearing (with a short cooldown) or underwhelming (with a longer cooldown)

Also change Q to work on non-epic Jungle monsters to open up an entire other possible playstyle for Scryr.

Last but not least, make Q give the modified minion a buff of some sort, like Attack or Health.

W:

Spellshields are HUGE in terms of how powerful they can be... making a spellshield that ALSO reflects the spell would take up HALF of Scryr's power-budget.

Look at Taric or Sejuani or even Fiddlesticks as a good examples of what having one strong move can do for the rest of your kit... with the move up, they are hard to beat. without their ults... they are next to useless.

I'm going to guess that you want Scryr to have a defensive ability still so here's what'd be a good replacement.

new W:

Scryr makes the enemy doubt themselves for (Scales with AP and level) seconds, giving all thier spells a (scales with AP) channel time(scales with ability rank).

This change will make Scryr much more effective when fighting other mages as well as give him some usefulness to his team when he's behind

E:

make this ability have minions target whoever it is that this hits. Also make this a very thin, fast, far-ranged skillshot.

R:

Change it's range to be short.

Add in that the enemy that's been taken over can be damaged by Scryr's allies as well as Enemies.

I think all these changes might help you improve upon your idea.

Anyhoo, Have a nice day!!!

LuaDotExe8/1/2017, 4:26:30 AM3 votes

Passive's gold generation doesn't fit in my opinion. Q is rather... boring and unrewarding to use. It just kinda. Happens. Your abilities should feel as though they have some big effect, but your champion's Q is kinda... dull. W is just broken. Nunu ult. Veigar ult. Nasus Q. Urgot ult. Normally, spell shields just EAT the ability, but reflecting the damage? Back in beta, Kayle's ultimate used to reflect all the damage they WOULD take into an AoE, and although this doesn't do that, it's practically the same thing-- it's too much punishment on the opponent. E is the only damaging ability. You could get away with that if you were auto-reliant, but a practitioner of magic that abuses people's mind is most definitely not going to be AD. On the topic of their ultimate. There's a very distinct reason that doesn't exist, however cool it may be. It lacks real counterplay; Mordekaizer's ghost is as close as we're getting, and that requires him to KILL YOU. That being said, the design space of that ability is taken by the prior mentioned ghost.

In general, their kit seems rather haphazardly strewn together. Thematically this would make sense, but not for the in-game kit. There's no real interaction with these abilities, and you can't combo them in any brilliant ways, such as how Lucian's abilities interact with his passive and E, or how Master Yi's Meditate and Alpha Strike work together to bring him options and much-needed survivability. Not to mention, there's not much room for skill expression. I like the thematic idea, but the abilities, while fitting the champion, don't fit with eachother.

Villainous8/1/2017, 3:52:43 AM2 votes

Apologies in advance for being blunt, but, uh...

This kit is quite broken.

So, I'll start with the elephant in the room. His ultimate. While it's difficult to say, since the duration isn't noted, but this appears to be probably the strongest ability in the game. At worst, it's a ridiculously powerful cc/displacement spell; a suped up charm/fear (compare/contrast the power of Sylvanas's Mind Control from HotS). In its most powerful use case, you steal their carry, murder a support and then watch as their own team murders the marksman by having them body block all the skill shots. Even if it ONLY allowed you to control their movement, it'd likely be a very powerful spell. That you also get what is more or less a guaranteed Mordekaiser ghost is absurd.

The next issue is his W. I'm not particularly kind to damage reflect abilities in general, and this one irritates me in just how disparate the potential effects are. Veigar's already been brought up, but most burst mages won't appreciate such an effect. On the other hand, having this popped by a single Rumble Q tick seems like a massive feel bad for Scryr.

His Q is an odd duck. It's potentially a powerful pushing tool depending on the numbers, but also denies your ADC gold, which seems like an unfortunate design choice.

His E is... An ability. It's not a bad idea, per say, but it's very bland, and doesn't seem to have any synergy with his kit.

His passive is just... There. It feels tacked on. It's low impact and only even affects two of his abilities (and only one of them in a meaningful way). I'm pretty sure there'd be nearly no difference if this was just added to his Q.

While I can appreciate the attempt to be thematic, Scryr breaks a number of design rules in what feels like more or less unsalvagable ways. Beyond that, while his abilities share a theme, they don't actually feel like a coherent kit. He has a push enabler, a harass ability, a personal defense tool and the most powerful teamfighting spell in the game. If you consider what such a champion would do if dropped into the game, even with potentially undertuned numbers, I doubt anyone would be pleased with the result.

EDIT: Okay, having gotten some distance, I'm now less salty, so I think I have some constructive criticism rather than just complaining.

I think you may have tunneled too hard on the literal effects you want to see: a champion that messes with the enemy's head. I feel that, with a little work, you can find something that creates the impression of the champion you want without having to out and out use the exact mechanical effect you expect. League is often a game of abstraction, where unusual effects are boiled down to what is achievable and balancable. Rather than just saying 'you control the enemy', perhaps consider an effect that simulates such an effect. Doing so would also help engage Scryr with the fantasy of his character; despite appearing to be a tricky, deceptive champion, he feels like he relies too much on brute force cc right now.

Alternatively, perhaps you might consider gating his current effects behind other mechanics? Part of what hurts his flow as a champion is that there's a distinct lack of a unifying play style. Tying his abilities to a mechanic would likely allow you a lot more room to craft a proper mentalist, while also giving him more depth to his kit.

AceGeo7/31/2017, 3:50:33 AM1 votes

W: Doubt- Scryr pries at the doubt of the enemy champions. He then shrouds himself in the manifestation of it, briefly causing the next enemy champion ability >that would damage Scryr to instead damage the caster for the exact damage he would have taken.

So, what you're saying is, is that if Veigar ults you, or Urgot ults you, or Zed ults you.... etc..etc...etc... your measly little ability will completely destroy anyone on the map. Seems balanced?

R: Weak Minded- Scryr focuses his ability to turn an enemy champion to his side for a brief time allowing him limited control. (Auto attack and movement >control similar to the likes of Tibbers, Shaco's clone etc.) During this time enemies can inflict damage and crowd control on their turned ally.

So, every time you will ult the enemy AD (let's say, for instance, Vayne) and all that extremely important damage will be taken off the enemy side, and instead aid your side 6v4 style. That's extremely op and impossible to balance. I don't care if this guy has 100 total hp, that's not fixable and would be forever broken.

His W or R alone would be enough for a single champion. But with everything else, let alone the two compbined... uhuh. No way. A champion that could instead copy an enemy's ability for a short period of time would work. But possibly on an ultimate or something.