Base Stats

Individual Ability Notes

Quas, Wex, Exort: A comparison to other mages

Ultimate Comparisons

Comparison Frost Blast Pyroblast Cast time 0.25 1.50 Range 14 15* Initial speed 1 5 Max speed 35 9 Acceleration 4 1 Primary target damage 100 810 Secondary target damage 275 405 Scaling 2.5% ** 5% Splash radius 5.5 3 Effect 1.5s Root None

Comparsion Shadow Fissure Precision Strike Radius 2.25 4 Base Damage 440 456 Scaling 2.5% 4% Hits Heroes Everything

Master of the Cold Dark

Talents

Hi there, ChaosOS again. Today I'm here to today to talk about THE ARCHLICH OF NAXXRAMAS, ESTEEMED LICH LORD OF THE PLAGUELANDS, COMMANDER OF THE DREAD NECROPOLIS, MASTER AND FOUNDER OF THE CULT OF THE DAMNED, FORMERLY OF THE COUNCIL OF THE SIX, CREATOR OF THE ABOMINATION, CORRUPTER OF THE SUNWELL, SUMMONER OF ARCHIMONDE THE DEFILER, BETRAYER OF HUMANITY, HEARTHSTONE ENTHUSIAST, AND MAJORDOMO TO THE LICH KING HIMSELF, KEL'THUZAD.Spotlight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv35ukl8c-w Kel'thuzad is the 9th mage to be added to Heroes of the Storm. The last mage to be added was Probius, who was a defensive combo caster. Kel'thuzad is a crowd control oriented caster who can chain his enemies together and root them in place. Once he completes his Master of the Cold Dark quest his damage increases dramatically, giving him a window of opportunity to utilize this power spike to crush his foes.Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10YIdMHsWUppMDVbYKr1iuIGgfrOYQPL3cIflD67lGfc/edit?usp=sharing Usual Disclaimer: All health and damage numbers below are for base "level 0" stats, unless otherwise noted.To see the math on the reworks coming with Kel'thuzad, check out the other posts on this blog HP: 1445 - HP Regen: 3.01 (Usual 1/480th of max HP)AD: 72AS: 1.00 - Attack Period: 1.00Attack Range: 5.5Radius: 1.0Kel'thuzad's base health is solidly in the middle of the pack for mages, with his base health below Azmodan, Gul'dan, Nazeebo, and Kael'thas, while above Chromie, Jaina, Probius, and Li Ming. His basic attacks are about 10% stronger than the role average, but this doesn't mean terribly much given how weak the average mage AA is.One new number I want to start including is a hero's radius. This is the size of the heroes hitbox, or the little circle underneath their feet. Kelthuzad's radius is a bit on the larger side at 1. By comparison Kael'thas has a radius of 1.125 and is notoriously fat ("NO CAPES") while Jaina is a slim 0.75.Death and Decay's cast time is rather long at 0.5 seconds rather than the default 0.125. Furthermore, the projectile does not automatically detonate at max range. The pool it leaves deals 70 damage every 0.5 seconds for 2 seconds, has a radius of 2, and spawns centered at the impact point. Thus, a target moving away from Kel'thuzad will not take any of the DoT damage, as they will move (0.5 * 4.3984)=2.1992 meters before the first instance of DoT damage. However, if the target is moving in any direcction other than directly away they will likely take at least 1 tick of damage, and if they are affected by some form of slow or root then they will likely take more.Frost Nova has two radii: An inner radius (1.5) which roots for 1 second, and an outer radius (3) which slows by 30% for 2.5 seconds. The slow is applied to all targets in the area and lasts longer than the root, so targets in the center are rooted for 1 second then slowed for 1.5 seconds. Each enemy hit by the inner radius gives Kel'thuzad 1 stack of his passive Master of the Cold Dark.Chains of Kel'thuzad is the first double skillshot, requiring hitting an enemy hero or structure with each shot. There is a 4 second cast window on the second shot, giving some leeway after landing the first. The second shot is identical in speed and length to the first. If two heroes are hit, both heroes will be pulled together and stunned for 0.5 seconds, while if a hero and structure are hit then the hero will be pulled to the structure and be stunned for 0.5 seconds. This ability gives up to 2 stacks of Blight, 1 for each hero it hits.To start this section, I want to give a significant amount of credit to this blue post which helped me understand the XML data behind spell effects http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/game/maps-and-mods/tutorials/missile-movers/ , and to the folks in the sc2 mapster discord who helped further elucidate these concepts.As a Mage, Kel'thuzads most important characteristic is his spells, which necessitated a trip to learn how spells in Heroes of the Storm actually work. To start, all spells have a cast time. This is the quantity of time that your character is effectively stunned while they perform the necessary hand flourishes to use an ability. The standard spell in Heroes of the Storm has a cast time of 0.125 seconds, which is 1/8th of a second or two "frames". (Tangent on this bit: The in-game engine runs at 16 frames per second, which is distinct but related to the graphically rendered frames per second. Heroes of the Storm effectively runs one "frame", or turn of actions, every 1/16th of a second. Spells are a small exception to this, as any missile has its position rendered every 1/32nd of a second)The first type of spell are direct casts, or point and clicks. These work by selecting the spell and clicking on the target of the spell. Many such spells rely on sending a projectile from the caster to the target, and the effective delay on the spell is based on how long it takes for the projectile to move from the caster to the target. For Kel'thuzad Frost Blast is an example of a direct cast.The second type of spell are skillshots, projectiles that travel along a trajectory affecting targets that intersect that trajectory. Skillshots have three key variables: Range, speed, and width. The range is the total distance the skillshot will go, the speed is how fast the skillshot travels that distance, and the width is how fat that skillshot is as it travels. Furthermore, skillshots can either stop (or cause some effect) when they hit a target, or simply pass through while doing damage and maybe applying some form of CC effect. For Kel'thuzad both Death and Decay and Chains of Kel'thuzad are skillshots.The third type of spell are Area of Effect (AOE) spells. AOE spells target a (usually) circular patch of ground, potentially having an "inner" and "outer" radius which apply damage and/or effects to targets within the radii. The key variables for AOE spells are the range, radius, and delay. The range is the max distance the character can be from the center of the AOE circle, the radius is the radius of the AOE circle, and the delay is how long it takes for there to be an effect from the end of the cast animation. For Kel'thuzad both Frost Nova and Shadow Fissure are AOE spells, while the persistent effect from Death and Decay also counts as an AOE spell.Now for the actual comparisons. I will use Kael'thas and Jaina for these comparisons, as they are the most similar to Kel'thuzad out of the other mages. I will use three core metrics for comparing the mages1. Effective range. This is the range that this character needs to be within to use all of their spells.2. Combo Cooldown. This is the cooldown for a character's full combo, based on their longest cooldown.3. Special Considerations: What kind of delays are in the combo, what kind of CC is provided, what can be blocked by minions.JainaEffective range: 7 (Cone of cold has the shortest range)Combo Cooldown: 15 (Blizzard has the longest)Special Considerations: Frostbolt can be blocked by minions, Blizzard takes 3.75 seconds for all three waves, provides a base 20% slow for 4 seconds to any target hitKael'thasEffective range: 5.5 (Living bomb, for EQ it's 10)Combo Cooldown: 14 (Gravity lapse has the longest, Flame strike is spammable poke)Special Considerations: Most likely to hit multiple targets, 1s delay on Flamestrike and 2s on Living Bomb, but Verdant Spheres can give flexibility and functionality.Kel'thuzadEffective range: 9 (Frost Nova has shortest range, it can be easy to use chains to pull a target outside of Frost Nova range, disrupting your own combo)Combo cooldown: 12 (10 with 1st tier of Master of the Cold Dark finished)Special Considerations: Need exactly 2 targets due to chains, Death and Decay can be blocked by minions, provides significant CC with Chains of Kelthuzad and Frost Nova.As is probably visible from above, Kel'thuzad's spells are sporting much stronger key characteristics, with his full kit accessible from long range while his combo is up more often. However, when it comes to landing his combo, the answer is a bit more tricky. Compared to Gravity Lapse, Chains of Kelthuzad is on a 4 second shorter cooldown, has a tiny bit longer range (10.25 vs. 10), and is much faster (Reaches 10 range in 0.4 seconds rather than 0.77). However, Gravity Lapse is 75% wider, making up much of the speed difference for a target moving perpendicular to Kelthuzad, and does not rely on hitting a second skillshot targeting another enemy or a structure. Thus, while Kelthuzad's combo initially seems more reliable given how much easier the first hit of chains is, requiring the second hit means that he can fail to properly set up his combo and there are plenty of situations in which he can't even combo at all, such as any one on one scenario away from structures.Frost Blast has most been compared to Pyroblast due to the visual similarities, even though with regards to functionality they are completely different.*Leash range for breaking the cast is 20, and a character at 100% MS moves ~6.6 meters in 1.5 seconds, so on a fleeing target Kael must start the cast while they are within ~13.4 meters of him.**Next section will compare Kelthuzad's 2.5% scaling and 75% ability power quest reward to 4% scalingAs you can see, while the functionality of being a guided missile that seeks a target is similar, almost every single number relevant to the abilities are different (The one exception is cooldown, as both have 100 seconds base). Not only is much more of Frost Blast's value in the root rather than the damage, but it is more intended to hit secondary targets than Pyroblast is.A slightly more complicated part of this comparison is the different initial speeds, max speeds, and accelerations. Essentially, Pyroblast will reach most targets faster (assuming they are launched at the same time), but after 2.67 seconds of travel (or 16.88 meters) Frost Blast will overtake Pyrobast.The other ultimate comparison is Precision Strike vs. Shadow Fissure. Again, a table for comparisonDespite both abilities being global AOEs on a 1.5 second delay, their functionality is different. Ironically, Nova's Precision Strike is much more flexible than Shadow Fissure, given that it has a larger radius and hits everything rather than just heroes, meaning it always provides global vision for the purpose of things like boss checking. By comparison, Shadow fissure has a much narrower use due to the smaller radius and only hitting heroes. In a pinch Nova can use Precision Strike for global wave clear, while Shadow Fissure can't Kel'thuzad's passive reads as follows: "Quest: Gain 1 Blight every time a Hero is Rooted by Frost Nova or hit by Chains of Kel'Thuzad. Reward: After gaining 15 Blight, the cooldown of all Basic Abilities is reduced by 2 seconds. Reward: After gaining 30 Blight, gain 75% Spell Power." A hidden part of this passive is "Unlike most other heroes in the game, Kel'thuzad's abilities scale at 2.5% per level rather than 4%". For more information on how % scaling works please refer to my previous article . I would like to highlight here that Kel'thuzad's ability scaling both sets a new record for lowest scaling (Previous holder was Zagara's infested Drop which scales at 3%) and has this record broken in the same patch, as the Chromie Rework drops the scaling on her Sand Blast from 4% to 2% per level.Relative to if he had 4% scaling, the 2.5% scaling represents a 13.5% damage drop at level 10 and a 25% damage drop at level 20. The 75% bonus spellpower effectively represents a 75% higher base, so the added damage as a percentage is much higher the earlier he completes the quest. At level 10 it represents a 51% damage boost, while by level 20 it only represents a 31% damage boost (both numbers relative to him not having the quest and scaling at 4% per level).One side effect of Kel'thuzad's passive is it diminishes the effect of other spellpower modifiers. Garrosh's Oppressor talent, which applies a 40% spellpower debuff to enemies hit by his basic attacks, rather than cutting a (quest complete) Kel'thuzad's damage by 40%, only cuts it by 23%. Probius' Power Overflowing talent, which grants 2 MPS and 10% spellpower to each ally in his Power Field, only buffs Kel'thuzad's damage by 5.7%.Returning to the Jaina and Kael'thas comparison, Kel'thuzad's full EWQ combo is in between Jaina's WEQ combo and Kael'thas' EQW combo. At level 10 Kel'thuzad's combo without quest completion does 946 damage, while Kael'thas does 828.9 damage and Jaina does 1722.3. However, with quest completion at 10, Kel'thuzad does 1655.5 total damage. By level 20 with quest, Kel'thuzad's damage falls off to 2119.1, while Kael'thas does 1227.0 damage and Jaina does 2549.4 damage. The conclusion is thus that Kel'thuzad's passive gives him a powerful mid-game power spike that levels off to "reasonable mage levels" by level 20.

If you want to follow along with full talent descriptions check out Kel'thuzad's hero page at https://heroeshearth.com/hero/kelthuzad/

Level 1

The Plaguelands

Blighted Frost

Barbed Chains

Level 4

Strip Shields

Phylactery of Kel'thuzad

Armor of the Archlich

Level 7

Accelerated Decay

Glacial Spike

Chilling Touch

Level 13

Icy Grasp

Chains of Ice

Chain-Link

Level 16

Arcane Echoes

Hungering Cold

Power of Icecrown

Level 20

Deathchill

Might of the Scourge

Shifting Malice

The Damned Return

Final Thoughts

increases the duration of the rot pool left by Death and Decay from 2 seconds to 3, and at 30 blight increases the radius from 2 to 2.6. The two additional ticks deal 70 damage each, or 140 damage total. This talent forms the basis of Kel'thuzad's "Q build", improving his damage significantly if he can keep people standing around.increases the center damage on Frost Nova from 212 to 318, adding 106 damage, and at 30 blight increases the root duration from 1 to 1.5 seconds (Also effectively cutting the slow aftereffect from 1.5 to 1 second).increases the damage of Chains of Kel'thuzad from 97 to 218.25, adding 121.25 damage. At 30 blight the chains also reduce the armor of the targtes by 15 for 4 seconds, cutting their EHP (Effective hit points, or the total damage needed to kill a target) by ~13%.gives 112 shields per target hit by Chains of Kel'thuzad. These shields last until removed by damage and can stack up to 224 total shielding. Furthermore, Chains of Kel'thuzad gains up to 270 damage against shielded targets. The self shielding scales at an ordinary 4% per level, while the damage bonus benefits from Master of the Cold Dark and scales at 2.5% per level. As a brief comparison to some other "Shield popper" spells, Varian's Shattering Throw triples his AA damage against shields and does up to 1456 damage on a 30 second cooldown. Most shields are not that strong, with Zarya's only providing 560 points of shielding on her self-shield, however Shattering Throw is hilarioulsy effective against Johanna's who choose Indestructible at level 20, which provides up to 2179 points of shielding to her. Previously, Shattering throw was the only other "shield popper", but this patch also added EMP grenade to Lt. Morales, which deals up to 400 bonus damage against shields.is a quest that gives a reward after collecting 10 globes, but this reward can be expended to instantly revive at the cost of restarting the quest. Globes come with each wizard minion, which spawn every 30 seconds. Staying in a single lane will complete the quest after 5 minutes, while double soaking will complete the quest in 2:30. Mercenary camps and objectives also give globes for the quest. Remember though that globe quests like Regeneration Master are notoriously difficult at taking 30 globes, and the Phylactery cannot "bank up" additional globes past the 10 necessary to charge, so don't expect to be able to use the revive more than twice per game. The 10% "Spellvamp", or spell lifesteal, is potentially powerful. A full combo on two targets at level 10 with Master of the Cold Dark restores (1655.5*2*0.1)=331.1 HP, while Kel'thuzad at level 10 has 2139 HP, thus restoring 15.5% of his max HP. By comparison, Strip Shields gives 332 shielding, an almost identical value. The shields can be acquired prior to a fight and refreshed during one, while the Phylactery provides real health sustain between fights, meaning the overall effect of each talent should be relatively similar (barring some other synergies that will be explored later). Thus, the question becomes the value of bonus damage vs. shields vs. a revive and sustain that only becomes full power after finishing some quests.deals 45 damage in 6 radius around Kel'thuzad, slowing the affected by 35% for 4 seconds. Furthermore, Kel'thuzad gains 50 physical armor for 4 seconds. This effect has a 25 second cooldown. This talent, reminiscent of Warcraft 3's Frost Armor (A Lich base spell), gives Kel'thuzad some focus fire and dive protection, providing physical armor against an Illidan who will be hard to hit with skillshots, while the slow enables KT's combo and the rest of his allies. I expect this talent, while initially less popular than the phylactery, will turn out to be absolutely critical given how powerful and popular dive heroes have been.is a stacking debuff applied to enemy heroes standing in Death and Decay's pool. This talent is the primary payoff for the increased pool duration at 1 and the reduced Q cooldown at 16, adding up to 240% of the pool damage (168 damage) for the first 6 ticks that an enemy stands in the pool and then increases the pool damage from 70 to 154 per tick. This talent adds a significant amount of damage in sustained fights where Kel'thuzad can repeatedly land Death and Decay on targets.does 220 damage (2.5% scaling) after 4 seconds to all enemies in 3 radius around the spike, which can be summoned anywhere within 8 range of Kel'thuzad. The spike's main purpose, however, is to act as a target for Chains of Kel'thuzad, giving him a way to combo and do additional damage in 1v1 scenarios.upgrades Kel'thuzad's next basic attack every 8 seconds to splash in 3 radius around the target, slow by 30%, and become affected by spellpower. It is unclear whether the talent is also intended to double the regular AA damage, as this is not indicated by the tooltip and may have been a PTR bug. With spellpower and just using base AA damage, this talent adds (72*.75)=54 damage every 8 secondsincreases the slow on Frost Nova from 2.5 seconds to 4 seconds, a 60% improvement. For enemies hit by the center, they are rooted for 1 second then slowed for 3 seconds rather than 1.5. Remember that the slow on Frost Nova is a 30% slow.adds a 70% slow for 1.25 seconds as an aftereffect to Chains of Kel'thuzad. While the slow is powerful, this is not necessarily better than Icy Grasp, as this slow will usually be overriden by the root from the center hit of Frost Nova in a normal combo rotation.reduces the cooldown of Chains of Kel'thuzad from 10 seconds to 6 seconds (12 to 8 if you haven't acquired 15 stacks of blight by level 13). This is a powerful talent that heavily synergizes and incentivizes the other Chains of Kel'thuzad talents.reduces the cooldown on Death and Decay from 4 to 2.75 seconds if it hits a hero. This allows for continuous uptime of the rot pool if selected alongside The Plaguelands at level 1, and overall represents a 31.25% cooldown reduction, or a 45% increase in Q throughput over time.adds a special kind of vulnerability to enemies hit by the center of Frost Nova, effectively causing Kel'thuzad's abilities to gain 60 base damage. This bonus damage does benefit from spellpower and scales at 2.5% per level. For a full combo this will typically trigger 5 times, once for the initial impact of Death and Decay and then once for each tick, however this number can easily go up or down. At level 20 with 30 stacks of blight, 5 ticks of this represent 860 damage, while Kel'thuzad's base combo does 2119.1 damage, meaning this is a ~40% damage increase.adds up to 30% spellpower to Kel'thuzad. However, this spellpower does not apply to his initial combo in a fight, and is not a full 30% damage boost due to nearly half of Kel'thuzad's damage coming from the bonus spellpower on Master of the Cold Dark. 30% spellpower only represents a 17% damage boost, and the spellpower from this talent is significantly more conditional than the added damage from Hungering Cold. This talent does have significant synergy with Chilling Touch (CT) at level 7, as the CT AA has a shorter cooldown than the duration of the PoI stacks, can gain multiple stacks in a single AA due to the AOE, and the CT AA itself benefits from the bonus spellpoweradds a significant slow as an aftereffect to the Frost Blast Root, and gives some "reset" potential by giving a 4.5 second recast window to any targets that are killed shortly after being hit by Frost Blast.allows KT to chain cast Shadow Fissure, however Shadow Fissure is difficult to hit and already has a short cooldown, so this simply offers some extra game closing potential to this ultimate.moves KT 7 meters in 0.5 seconds (damage range is 8), giving a powerful mobility option to an otherwise immobile caster. However, the 4 minute cooldown is prohibitively long for this to be used as an ordinary escape, instead this is primarily gated behind acquiring hero takedowns, which tend to be rare after level 20 without the game simply ending.is the capstone to the Q build Kel'thuzad, doubling his casts. This is an extremely powerful talent for sustained fights and turns Kelthuzad into an extremely high damage threat.Kel'thuzad is a powerful mage that provides a lot of control and AOE damage. Given how highly anticipated he is, Blizzard really seems to have knocked it out of the park with this hero. The baseline quest gives Kel'thuzad a unique power spike unrelated to his talent choices, while his spells are creative and allow for many fun comboes.Outside of Kel'thuzad, I'd like to highlight http://hotsapi.net/ which is the best attempt I've seen at a hotslogs alternative. Hotslogs has been pretty innacurate going on a year now due to significantly lowered usage statistics, which are a direct result of how toxic the ads on it have become.