Forgers, meet your newest ally… and your worst nightmare. The Mausk fugitive now seeks a new life and fights for it. Designed as a hypercarry, Nazarah’s passive and skills all help her choose and hunt down a target. Her ability to stick to a target means that enemies will be unable to simply ‘run out of range’ of her basic attacks. While she doesn’t have any crowd control, she has a passive that allows her to store up basic attacks to take advantage of the other parts of her kit.

With a focus on the ability to reposition, Nazarah can speed towards or away from enemy Forgers. Chasing down her enemies allows her to stay in range to go for the kill, flipping a switch and sending them back to Home Forge… but be warned. Mobility comes with a responsibility, and Nazarah can’t simply press a button and get out without proper positioning, planning, or, in lieu of either, the use of very valuable spell cooldowns. Her tools to engage are also her tools to escape and they are rather telegraphed. Positioning is key to succeed as the first ranged carry of AetherForged.

Manipulated for political gain, Nazarah is driven by only two things: her desire for vengeance and the need to untangle the chaotic fabric of her past.

Utilizing her arsenal of weaponized needles, her enemies are at the mercy of her flawless accuracy.

Read her story by clicking the picture above!

Nazarah’s kit attempts to capture the feeling of playing an assassin in-lore but through the mechanics of a ranged carry. As such, the kit aims to preserve a feeling of swiftness and lethal efficiency while also dealing most of her damage over time throughout a fight, rather than through front-loaded damage. It also attempts to create that sense of swiftness in a similar fashion, heavily limiting her capability for bursts of movement but allowing her greater mobility passively should Nazarah be focusing her basic attacks on a single target.

Abilities

Passive: Tail Draw

Nazarah can successively fire her basic attack as long as she has a needle readied. Nazarah will ready a needle at a rate equivalent to her basic attack cooldown and can have a very small number of needles ready to be fired at a time. The rate at which Nazarah will ready a needle is increased by a % per point of Haste.

o7 design notes:

Nazarah’s passive serves as the base that the rest of her kit is built on top of, allowing her to unleash a flurry of basic attacks. This synergizes well with both her Hot Pursuit and Afflicting Acupuncture abilities, as well as defining her basic attack-centric playstyle. Combined with Hot Pursuit and Afflicting Acupuncture, she will naturally favor on-hit, haste-heavy builds. We expect this ability to be one of the more defining features of Nazarah’s kit.

Q: Afflicting Acupuncture (Passive: Hot Pursuit)

Passive: Successive basic attacks against the same target grant a moderate movespeed bonus. This effect can stack up to twice after three successive basic attacks against the same target.

Active: Nazarah’s basic attacks deal a small amount of bonus physical damage for a short amount of time. This damage increases by a % per % missing health of the target. While this skill is on cooldown, Nazarah cannot gain any stacks of Hot Pursuit.

o7 design notes:

This ability, in conjunction with her passive, forms the core of Nazarah’s kit. The passive component of this ability, Hot Pursuit, serves to fill the same design space as a slow being tied to basic attacks without creating a permaslow scenario or requiring an internal cooldown. This aids Nazarah both in kiting away from danger and closing in for the kill. This should not, however, be seen as a cover-up for poor positioning. Her movespeed buff is potent, but not extreme; overextending as Nazarah will still prove just as fatal as with any other carry. Without the time to create the necessary distance otherwise if dove on, she relies on having set up a Bound and Rebound off a nearby wall to escape harm.

Once she’s softened up her enemies and is ready to go for the kill, the active component of this ability, Afflicting Acupuncture, will help her to finish off her target. Doing so, however, requires a commitment of forfeiting Hot Pursuit for a duration afterward, ensuring that Nazarah must pick the opportune moment to go for the jugular or risk her primary source of precious mobility.

W: Flurry of Needles

Nazarah throws a cone of needles dealing a moderate amount of damage. These needles stop at the first unit hit and needles beyond the first that hit an enemy deal heavily reduced damage.

o7 design notes:

As Nazarah will take longer than most carries to scale into her full potential, due to her basic-attack focus and hyper-carry nature, this ability is aimed at easing some of her early woes in the laning phase. This ability will allow her a means of limited harassment and also serve as a means of farming if she’s being zoned too hard. It isn’t intended to be a large source of damage nor to contribute to her DPS, but in the stages of the game where the players are delicately posturing around each other, it can serve to soften up the enemy slightly before a fight breaks out.

E: Bound/Rebound

Nazarah dashes a short distance. If Nazarah collides with a wall with this ability, she will immediately dash a moderate distance off the wall with a direction relative to the angle she hit the wall at.

o7 design notes:

While Hot Pursuit gives Nazarah a slight amount of mobility passively, we felt the kit could benefit from having a more active means of repositioning. This thematically ties into her being a swift assassin while also providing the mobility safety-net a ranged carry like herself so desperately craves. Due to her hyper-carry nature and scaling so well into the late game, however, we did not want a large amount of mobility on this ability, at least not in a reliable fashion. Her initial dash will be quite short, roughly half the range of her basic attack range. However, if she’s able to dash into a wall at a very shallow angle, the rebound off the wall will be a notably longer distance than the initial dash. This serves to double down on her focus around positioning, allowing her to swiftly cross a large amount of ground, while also being kept in check due to the extended range being telegraphed and conditional.

R: Pincushion

Nazarah targets an enemy forger, throwing an enormous number of needles in a flurry over the next several seconds, dealing a large amount of total damage split among each needle evenly. Nazarah is able to move during the duration of this ability, but cannot cast any other abilities or basic attack. Needles are thrown to where the target is located at the time of the throw. If the target moves while a needle is in transit, they will remain moving in the direction of where the target originally was when they were thrown. Needles stop at the first enemy forger hit.

o7 design notes:

Nazarah’s ultimate serves to fill a handful of roles. Due to the long range (notably longer than basic attack range), coupled with high total damage and ability to stay mobile throughout the duration, Nazarah will be provided invaluable versatility in how she uses this ability. After a fight has mostly ended and weakened enemies are attempting to back off or flee, this can be used as an execute to finish someone off as they thought they’d reached safety. During a teamfight, the large amount of damage dealt will undoubtedly soften even the hardiest of enemies, meaning that while those on the tankier end of the spectrum might want to block a large amount of the damage that would hit a more vulnerable teammate, not even the more defensively-oriented will want to be hit by the entire duration. One could even use this ability to deter someone focusing Nazarah, should she be able to remain safe for long enough without the benefit of Hot Pursuit. The ability to keep moving throughout the duration means that if someone were to focus her and charge through her team towards her, she can kite backward while her ult is firing, softening up the assailant for her to deftly handle afterward.

The primary means of intended counterplay comes from a combination of blocking part of the damage by positioning behind allies more suited to take the damage at the moment as well as burning any mobility abilities to dodge a portion of the damage. The needles will fly quite swiftly, having little travel time, and will be near impossible to sidestep simply by walking. However, any ability that provides mobility ought to provide enough movement to cause a handful of needles to miss their intended target.

General notes:

Her kit relies largely on fundamentals as a carry, primarily focused on her basic attacks, notably the synergy between her Tail Draw, Afflicting Acupuncture, and Hot Pursuit. Nazarah has limited tools through the early game, relying on doubling up her basic attacks with her passive or splitting them between last hitting and harassing in order to gain favorable trades when she can manage them. Her Flurry of Needles allows her an extra source of harass damage or farming ability if needed. Her primary source of damage, however, will be through basic attacks and on-hit effects synergizing with her passive, and as such will need time to scale into her power more so than most carries.

She will be prone to diving and ganks unless she’s positioned extremely well, due to her highly conditional and telegraphed mobility. However, if set up for, her Bound and Rebound will allow her to quickly get the jump on a mispositioned opponent or escape harm to safety. A typical play-pattern for Nazarah should likely involve lots of skirting around the edge of a fight, constantly basic attacking the closest available target of the highest priority, and waiting to go in for the kill. Anyone left weak from the fight should be careful of a barrage of needles as Pincushion is unleashed on them.

Enemies should also be wary of positioning close to walls, as doing so allows Nazarah an easy means of quickly closing the gap should an opportune moment provide itself for her to capitalize on. Nazarah should prove to have a high skill demand, both mechanically and through decision-making, requiring swift actions on the part of the player in order to maximize the number of basic attacks and on-hit effects applied while also remaining mobile and safe. Nazarah should ultimately be a highly rewarding and incredibly potent Forger in skilled hands, but she must be played carefully and her weaknesses must be respected by those playing her in order to survive long enough to efficiently and coldly drop her enemies.

Thread the Needle

As we wrap up this Forger release, we want to know how you’d play this vicious assassin. We’ve said what roles we think she’s best in, but what roles do you think would be fun to see her in? What spells do you think would be fun on her? Let us know, as usual, on our social media channels!

As a parting gift, have some of the work-in-progress art and modelling for Nazarah! Past this point, this content will be polished for future release!