INTRODUCING OZO!

Quick and nimble, Ozo leaps from hero to hero as he bounces around the battlefield. He is at home in the center of a chaotic fight where he can deal large amounts of area-of-effect damage. Remember to build defensive items to maximize the amount of time he can stay in combat. Read about his abilities below.

HEROIC PERK: CARNIE LUCK

Ozo receives 10%-30% additional healing, barrier and fortified health from all sources. (This does not affect health regeneration.)

THREE-RING CIRCUS

Ozo performs a three-hit combo with his ring. Each part of the combo is a separate tap within a 5-second window.

First hit: Ozo thrusts his ring forward, damaging the target and other enemies in front of him.

Second hit: Ozo dashes through his target and deals damage.

Final hit: Ozo spins, damaging all nearby enemies.

Each hit deals weapon damage and triggers basic-attack effects. Ozo heals for each enemy damaged by any of these hits, with hero damage granting a greater heal.

ACROBOUNCE

Ozo hops onto the head of a nearby target (enemy, ally or creature), slowing it by 60% and damaging it. While Ozo is airborne, quickly tap a nearby target to bounce off one head to the other. Three hops maximum. The final hop deals increased damage. If Ozo hops at least twice, he’ll get a burst of move speed. Reduced crystal scaling vs. minions.

BANGARANG

Ozo charges up before tumbling to a targeted enemy hero. If he reaches the target within 1 second, he deals damage, stuns for 0.5 seconds and flips the target over his ring to behind him. While tumbling, Ozo will knock aside and deal reduced damage to all other enemies in his path.

OZO AND ‘RED LANTERN’ KOSHKA LORE:

“THE RED LANTERN FESTIVAL”

By SugarVenom

“Wait up, Ozo!”

Mad blue sparks flashed from Ozo’s ring as it bumped down the cobbles of the Undersprawl’s main avenue, Ozo in its center, Koshka dashing doubletime after him in her prettiest red party dress. Red lanterns cast a charming glow on the dingy neighborhood, and paper cutouts decorated the windows of even the roughest taverns. Ozo spun to a flourished stop by the minion pens at the city gate. “I win!” he cried. The minions clapped.

Koshka caught up and gave Ozo’s nose a pinch. “It isn’t impressive if you ride in the ring!”

Ozo hooted laughing, crouching among the fragrant kumquat trees that grew by the fence, his tail flicking. “Don’t be jealous that I’m faster. And can jump farther.”

“You cannot,” said Koshka as she hopped the fence to the minion pen. “No one jumps farther than me. Come now, sweeties, it’s festival time!” she crooned at the minions.

“Can too. I can jump this whole city in one leap. And I’m stronger than all these minions put together. My ring weighs more than two elly-fants. Just try.” He held his ring out over the fence.

“What’s an elly-fant?” Koshka ignored the ring; the minions grunted and shoved their noses into her palms as she handed each a red envelope. “Don’t be rude,” she ordered, bopping one greedy beast on the noggin. “Open it over there.” The beasts crowded in a corner away from her, tearing open their envelopes. Two shiny gold coins dropped out of each. The minions tried to eat them.

“I can transform into anything,” bragged Ozo. “Guess what I am!” He paced back and forth along the fence on all fours, meowing.

Koshka giggled. “That’s nothing. I can pretend to be a girl.” She stood up on her two feet and pranced around the pen, her chin jutted up, and murmured in a breathy voice, “Look at me, I’m a princess. I like peanut butter.”

“I can summon the wind!” cried Ozo, then puffed out a big breath at her.

Koshka stumbled as if blown backward. “Whoa. Just for that, I’ll summon the rain.” She stuck out her tongue and blew a big zzzzrrrrbbbt at her monkey friend.

Ozo jumped away right in time, throwing down his ring and standing in the middle. “Well I can cast a protective barrier. Nothing can get me in here!”

Koshka wiggled her bum and shot forward on all fours right at him, leaping over the ring. “I’m way too strong for your dumb barriers!”

“You’re powerful,” said Ozo, “But I bet I can fit more kumquats in my mouth than you can.”

The pair dashed for the kumquat trees and jammed the fruit into their mouths, counting until the numbers were just muffled syllables. Koshka had to concede the victory to Ozo when her lumpy cheeks filled to bursting.

“Okay, okay,” said Koshka, chewing up the last of her mouthful. “But I can do a magic thing.”

“Nuh uh. You don’t know magic.”

“I know a thing,” she said. “Watch.” She scooted up close to Ozo and looked at his face. Her fingers slipped behind one of his ears. “Look what I found!” she announced, and held up a melon candy.

“Whoa,” whispered Ozo in awe, taking the candy. “You do know magic.”

“Happy Red Lantern Festival,” she said, hugging his neck, and the two sat and ate candied fruit together, watching the lanterns glow red on the cobbles as the sun set.

The End.

Read more Ozo Lore: ‘Showoffin!’

INSIGHT ON OZO’S ACRO-BOUNCE ABILITY FROM SUPER EVIL SENIOR GAMEPLAY ENGINEER AWALLTOO:

Ozo’s Acro-bounce started with something I wanted for Blackfeather: an in-and-out, lunge-to-an-enemy and dash-back-to-an-ally ability. It felt like a natural fit for Ozo, because monkeys are agile and nimble, but since Ozo is a bruiser, we reversed it: instead of in-and-out, the first was a leap to an ally and then a leap to the enemy. He could use it to reposition, get back to his target, or gap close quickly. Unfortunately, our first try was clunky and prohibitively hard to use because it required four taps.

Right before Christmas, I was driving home and it came to me: what if there was a way to make it work in fewer than four taps? Preselecting a target could make it three taps. Could we do two? What about one? We came up with a bunch of ways to reduce it for more accessibility and tried out a one-tap version: he found the closest ally to his target and automatically bounced. This was cool because he could bounce off of an ally to reach an enemy who was otherwise out of range, but problematic because you didn’t really have any way to control where you went, so it didn’t really work out either. This left us with two extremes: our original problem was too many taps; our new problem was too little control. We knew we had to strike a balance between them.

After some more brainstorming and iteration, we wound up with an ability that took two taps to activate, but only one more for each additional target. Because you could queue up more bounces with just a single tap, it meant that you had time to control your trajectory as you were moving, and that felt great. At first, it was buggy and unreliable and people complained, but they only complained because it wasn’t doing the advertised thing. When it worked, people loved it and had a blast. That was when I knew we’d found something with a lot of potential. From there, we fixed the tech problems, spent a lot of time polishing and tuning the ability, and it became the iconic part of his kit that it is now.

It was Chainsaw’s idea to let Ozo earn one gold coin for the bounce. The minute I tried it, I knew it was a winner. And as an added bonus, it only took two lines of code.