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[ Character Concept ] Zenith, King of the cosmos. WIP - Advice appreciated. ( first submission )

Zalkion ·6/25/2017, 11:50:42 AM·4 votes·419 views
http://imgur.com/J84KIcq

Zenith. The pinnacle of himself. Entrapped within the cage of the cosmos for all of eternity.
To be gifted with knowledge, power and wisdom. Only to understand that balance is all that will come of ones own actions. Zenith began as a sentient flame, born alongside the creation of the cosmos. Only to drift through aimlessly for what would seem like an eternity.
Through his journey he would incarnate onto many planets, and live through many life cycles. Some of them vast and beautiful, some hellish and desolate. But through his travels he would have met many forms of life, and kind souls. To help him evolve his flame to the utmost pinnacle of its limitations.
Zenith Eventually was inhibited from incarnating anymore only to live an omnipotent existence, with a multitude of evolved consciousness all waging against each other. At one moment in time, Zenith had to fend off the evil nature within himself and end the war within his own existence. So he developed a technique to help rid himself of evil karma. Thus was the creation of the first black hole. Zenith funneled all of his hatred and pain from past experiences into a small point in reality. Until it began to have a force of its own, Pulling everything, including the light into its spectacle of a core. This was only the beginning, within the primal universe began the dawn of the black masses... Zenith scoured the universe leaving behind him a wake of darkness and hate. Trying to rid himself of his own omnipotence so that he can incarnate once again onto a physical plane. but to no avail, the more darkness he rids from himself, the more that funnels in. It was an endless cycle of death and rebirth within the vastness of the cosmos. Zenith had no options left so he decided to engorge himself with all the darkness within himself. Creating the first super massive black hole. Light, and time seemed to bend endlessly within this hole he created. Being consumed by the darkness for an unknown period of time.
Until one moment in time, the black hole expanded. And all that was dark was converted to light. Zenith was finally free from the darkness, from within the explosion all of the hatred within him had turned to vibrant fire and light.
Now to have ascended beyond what would be omnipotence. He was a singular consciousness but existed within the light of every living flame in the cosmos. He could see through them, and feel them. although not them, he could slightly influence the direction of the masses by circulating the darkness within there soul onto himself, and then expelling it into a newborn black hole.
Thus began zeniths quest. To quell all the darkness from the cosmos and lead humanity towards a brighter dawn.

[ Support Champion ] [Abilities ]

Passive: Omnipotent grace.

Whenever Zenith Dies he will fire a skillshot bolt of light every 3 seconds. ( once per allied champion, total of 5 shots Damage does not stack for multiple shots ) out from beneath the feet of every allied champion on the field. Dealing 80 + 5 damage per level + 10% AP

Q: Consume Darkness

Zenith consumes the spiteful thoughts from nearby allies. Causing them to regenerate 1%/2%/3%/4%/5% HP per second. Duration increases based on amount of hp missing. All targeted allies receive 10/15/20/25/30% CC reduction for 5 seconds.

W: Incarnation

Passive: if an enemy is killed within 10 seconds of nearby allies death. Target ally can revive next to zenith after respawn timer is over.

Active: Zenith incarnates 1/1/2/2/3 Light based beings onto target location. Dealing 90/120/140/160/180 + .3% ap Magic damage. Light beings deal damage equal to .6% of Zeniths Armor.

E: Purge Darkness

Zenith creates a shield of darkness around him for 4 seconds, absorbing up to 60/90/120/150/180 + .5% of zeniths MR The Darkness then expands and explodes blinding nearby enemies in the flash for .5/.8/1/1.2/1.5 seconds.

R: Super Massive Black Hole.

Zenith teleports to nearby location within 220 units around him. Becomes untargetable for .5 seconds and then starts to suck enemies into him in .3 second pulses for 1.2 seconds. Each of the 4 pulses activate one of Zeniths abilities in order, Passive/q/w/e.

https://www.twitch.tv/zenithillustrations

Will stream daily. Tune in and look at my progress!

any advice is greatly appreciated. I am not good with using digital drawing atm so yeah. : /

5 Comments

Zalkion 6/25/2017, 2:47:25 PM1 votes

[img]http://i.imgur.com/CcMEgT2.png[/img]

update

ModThe Djinn6/25/2017, 4:27:13 PM1 votes

Hey there, and welcome to the boards! Always good to see new faces around here!

Let's dig in and see what you've got!

#LORE

His name is Zenith. He is the pinnacle of all things within the universe. Weaver of galaxies, Creator of black holes.

Two things right off the bat. First is that this treads REALLY close to the lore of Aurelion Sol. It's hard to support and differentiate two giant primeval cosmic space beings. I'd also suggest that if your fan concept can be summed up as "the pinnacle of all things in the universe" you might need to go a little further towards making it into a unique character instead of an all-powerful god. Even Aurelion Sol has some indication that he's not as great as he thinks he is in the big scheme of things, and he's shown to be fallible.

He is syndras twin flame. her envoy and master.

This is odd, as Snydra seems pretty self-sufficient, and not at ALL on the level I'd expect the herald of a cosmic power to be. She's also not the sort I see as subservient to anyone -- her title alone ("The Dark Sovereign") implies rulership, not service. In fact, her entire backstory is about her desire to overthrow those who would seek to control her.

Zeniths ultimate foe is Xerath who stole power from the akashic records and ascended into higher planes of reality, attaining immortality, power and wisdom. Xerath is cannot be killed and will continue to search for more power and everlasting truth. Zenith had to prevent xerath from attaining power and knowledge equal to his own, so he locked away his ether energy into a megalithic cage, Chastising him from the neverending power xerath ultimately sought after.

Zenith is the father of Velkoz and the one who imbued kassadin with the knowledge of the void. He gave kassadin the privilege to freely wander the void in search of wisdom.

This is similar to the Syndra comment above -- we already know Xerath's story, and it's not ascending to a higher plane of reality, or being imprisoned by a god. If you're tying existing champions into your story that's great, but you'll typically want to make sure you're not changing their stories to do so.

The Kassadin/Vel'Koz plots just seem thrown in for the sake of having connections -- nothing in this guy seems to imply that he's tied to the void in particular, nor does he seem the sort who would have children, let alone a tentacled void scientist monster.

CLOSING LORE THOUGHTS There's not a lot to this story that isn't "this guy is a god," which is a rather boring story. I'm interested in who he is as an individual being, or as a cosmic personality. Currently all you're doing is saying "look how cool he is -- he's connected to all these characters in ways that make him look cool." Many of those, however, make the other characters look weaker by comparison -- he makes Syndra subserviant, Vel'Koz into someone's child, Kassadin into someone who didn't embrace the void of his own will, Xerath into someone bound by something much stronger than himself. You want your stories to showcase your champion concept, but NOT at the expense of other champions.

I'd recommend figuring out WHY you think League needs another god-level power, and then figure out WHO this guy is before you figure out what he's done. Make him into a unique character, not a collection of cool powers.

I'll also caution that writing immensely powerful characters is actually HARDER than writing more mundane characters. It's really easy to fall into a new designer trap of making your guy THE BEST, and that's not usually very interesting. Characters with a lot of personality usually have flaws, weaknesses, and personalities with distinguishing features -- those make for better stories than simply great power.

#KIT

Just as a note, it's hard to judge a kit without at least SOME idea of cooldowns, scaling, and damage. Even things like "low cooldown, high damage, medium CC duration" can be helpful. It's also helpful to know what you intended the character to be -- is he a battlemage? An artillery mage? A utility mage with CC? A burst mage?

Passive: Omnipotence. - Upon Death Zenith can reincarnate next to any allied team mate for 10 seconds before ultimately dying. 180s CD

Not quite sure how this works. Do you target an ally and return to life for good? Do you return to life for 10 seconds and then die again? I'm guessing it's the first one, which is a pretty interesting effect. I'm not sure I endorse it as a mechanic though -- I think there are weird cases where you die in one lane and suddenly appear mid-gank in another lane to finish off a fight, and I'm not sure I like the idea of using death as a psuedo-teleport of sorts. Tower-diving to gank another lane just feels wrong.

Q; Black Hole. - Zenith chooses target location within X Units and pulls all matter into a minute point of existence. after a 1 second animation all targets sucked into the point take X damage and are stunned for X seconds.

This is basically an upgraded Viktor stun field. Not necessarily a problem, but worth mentioning.

W: Transfusion. - Zenith opens a rift into the void, going invisible and walking through the time space continuum for 2/2.5/3/3.5/4 seconds. When returning to the physical plane all nearby units are pushed back and take X damage.

This is an odd ability unless his Q is close range, since it looks like it encourages him to engage.

E: Cosmos. - Zenith fires X/X/X/X/X number of cosmic anomalies onto the field ahead of him. The first anomaly is specified at target location, the remaining anomalies are fired randomly near target location.

...I have no idea what a cosmic anomaly is, or how it functions mechanically. I'm assuming it's a skillshot of some kind? Regardless, I'd avoid any mechanic that has randomness as a key component -- it tends to be super unreliable.

Further, this seemingly medium-to-long range ability works oddly with his W, which, again, seems like an initiation or close-range tool. Is the goal to split up the enemy team and then bombard them?

R: Deity. -Every minute Zenith Grows in size attaining bonus AP and HP. Zenith can optionally expel his attained mass and fire a spastic blast of energy, within the blink of an eye at target location dealing X damage knocking up enemies for X seconds. OR zenith can save his stacks for the increasing AP and HP bonus to deal bonus damage for each stack of Deity that is saved up.

Abilities that make you sacrifice a big bonus to gain an effect aren't fun, usually. Having to expel your accumulated AP and HP to nuke someone doesn't feel fun. Also, infinite time-based scaling doesn't sound fun to play against -- there's no counterplay to it other than "win quickly." Even NASUS you can stop by keeping him away from minions, but the only counterplay to this guy is "don't have a long game."

#CLOSING THOUGHTS

You've got some cool stuff here, and it's not a bad first crack at champion design. I think you've fallen into two common traps though -- trying to make a character that is "cool and powerful and larger than life" without figuring out who he is as a person or what he brings to the story, and making a bunch of fun abilities without thinking about the sort of playstyle you're trying to convey. Part of him feels like a ranged utility mage, part feels like an initiator, part feels like a scaling bruiser. His passive is weird on all of those kits.

So a lot of good elements, but the overall whole is a bit shaky and not as well realized as I think it could be. I encourage you to keep iterating on it though! Nothing is ever perfect the first time 'round. :)