How would you feel about a new character?

[eddyshe]

To chime in a little bit here:

Violet:
Violet's damage is a little tricky, because so much of it is focused in DoTs. When Violet hits you with Cooties at a range of 9m, you take 27 damage. Not that bad, you have good health (around 500 for mages/assassins). Violet then runs away, even better I can heal up. The problem is that you continue taking damage for the next 5 seconds, an additional 75 damage, while Violet has already started regenerating any damage you did because she was out of combat and you weren't. Now Violet can come back in and poke you more, or worse she could use Itsy Bitsy Spidy which is going to deal even more damage. What's even better is that these dots are unavoidable. Unless you go invulnerable as Cobal or Zaar you can do nothing to prevent this damage.

She can easily trade with you from range and will come out on top of the trade every time. Violet does need a weakness, and that is being jumped on by assassins. It is very important that I say jumped on though, because if you try to just walk at her you'll take too much damage to do anything in the fight.

Ash:
You're correct that Ash is not a tank, but was suffering compared to other supports because his kit requires him to be very close to the fight in order to shield, apply crowd control, or fear. His old HP wasn't properly allowing him to play where his abilities required him to be, so we tweaked it up some. It's not as high as tanks, and he doesn't have as good protections as tanks, this is just to allow him to perform better.

Khalid:
Khalid was healing too much, plain and simple. Pairing Khalid with a tanky character, with the additional damage reduction in his Sandstorm and damage reflection created a nearly unstoppable wall coming for you and your tower.

Jack:
No one mentioned anything about this, but this is just Jack receiving the support rework the others received. It reduces his 1 on 1 sustainability in exchanged for boosted effectiveness in supporting allies. Supports are not meant to easily solo.

Magmatus:
We know Magmatus is too strong. We do want him to be a more damage focused tank, but felt the amount he could push characters (on an unstoppable dash) was creating situations that too heavily favored him. This is a first attempt to bring him down without removing his damaging feel. There are other ideas but will only be done if necessary.

Shard:
Shard's Mirage was meant to be a defensive tool, as well as an offensive tool for those who can pull it off. The problem was no one used it offensively (for good reason) and instead it left Shard feeling a little underwhelming. Part of the reason it was hard to use the clone offensively is that it would be destroyed before you could even teleport to it. The invulnerability timing will now line up with your ability to teleport to the clone, hopefully allowing more use of the clone for offensive for the more advanced Shard players.

Zaar:
Zaar is currently extremely strong, in multiple ways. One of the problems was that when Zaar got near you, you couldn't move. Having multiple freezes, especially an AoE instant cast meant enemies couldn't attempt to counter you, they just waited frozen hoping you didn't kill them. Without trying to adjust damage, this is our first shot at his balance.

Thank you so much. These explanations are too good.