Inaros Rework Idea
Passive:
Undying
Proposal
When down, health leeching from abilities instead refills the sarcophagus. Upon revival, Inaros will be invulnerable for 5 seconds.
Reasoning
I’ve opted to try and make Inaros passive his new health gating mechanic. It’ll still largely be the same. Only now, similar to what abilities like Yareli’s aquablades do for Inaros; he’ll now be able to charge up his revive counter using his own healing mechanics, ensuring he can revive again as long as the player’s ability devour stays active. In a way, he’ll no longer recover based off of damage dealt to the enemies, but how much health he would be receiving, and this would not scale with health mods. So, the more health Inaros has, means a longer time it could take for Inaros to recover from his sarcophagus. Considering how abilities such as scarab swarm can still heal Inaros considerably well already, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue for upkeep.
Abilities:
1. Desiccation
Proposed Change
Enemies killed by finishers while scarab armor is active explode the sand to nearby enemies affected by ability range. Explosions consume 5% of Scarab armor and affect persists with remaining duration.
Reasoning
This will give Inaros some synergy with his abilities and ensures the ability cannot just be spammed for infinite spread. The spread would also act to provide better crowd control capabilities with Inaros’ first ability.
2. Devour
Propose Change – Complete Overhaul
Ability instead becomes a drain ability. While active, Inaros and his allies gain innate life steal of 5%/10%/15% on weapons. Inaros additionally gains 100% life steal on abilities. Killing desiccated enemies drop health orbs. If devour is active, all abilities will contribute to restoring health to Inaros once downed.
Reasoning
Devour in it’s current state falls off extremely hard rather quickly. I opted to make it far more support oriented while ensuring Inaros can play an active role. Inaros always seemed like he’s supposed to be a health giving support frame hence the innate lifesteal on Devour.
The health orb addition also provides some synergy with his first and gives a reason to run equilibrium to upkeep the ability or health conversion to give Inaros some extra armor for survivability. I also thought that Inaros could have a ramping increase to critical damage (not chance) for every tick of lifesteal inflicted up to 1.2x but thought that might’ve been too much. Let me know what you think of that idea.
3. Sandstorm
Propose Change – Complete Overhaul
Sandstorm is no longer a channeled ability nor a tornado. The duration is now affected by ability duration. Inaros summons a sweeping sandstorm around him. The sandstorm afflicts puncture and blast procs every 0.1 seconds. The sandstorm can spread to more enemies affected by scarab swarm. Alternatively, the sandstorm could supply 80% decreased damage and 75% decreased accuracy and not rely on procs to do so, dealing true damage as well.
Reasoning
Sandstorm is the other ability of Inaros that is extremely dated and lackluster. I opted to push further the idea of a ‘storm’ rather than a ‘tornado’. Visually it would be an area with a bunch of sound flying around, like a real sandstorm. Figured the support this could give procs that are often seldom not useless on weapons due to their more generally defensive applications.
Slash never made much sense to me for a sandstorm as well. The ability for it to spread like scarab swarm could also offer synergy. I was also thinking the sandstorm could potentially give damage vulnerability to enemies in it (Credit to @Arden_Umbraheart) or enemies affected by desiccation when the sandstorm is cast spawn sand shadows.
4. Scarab Swarm
Propose Change
Scarab swarm will additionally provide corrosive procs per sec. Enemies affected by scarab swarm provide an additional 20% (maybe more or less) armor per enemies affected. Lifesteal is now removed as it’s part of devour.
Reasoning
There is not much I figured to change for this ability. It’s not anything too amazing but it certainly felt pretty fine as is. I felt it was pretty weird it deals corrosive damage, but not the procs, so I opted to change that. I gave it the ability to provide an additional armor increase so long as an enemy is in a scarab swarm for better incentivization for casting off the scarab armor. I do also think casting off the scarab armor should be affected by ability efficiency but that could be a good or bad thing depending on positive or negative efficiency.
Additional Notes
Sand shadows is now essentially removed from base kit, but I do think their inclusion as the augment Desiccation's Curse is fine as is for flavor. I just didn’t think it would be necessary to have it as part of his core kit anymore. Augments in generally I don’t really know what to touch up for them. They were also not the focus of scrutiny for Inaros of now in this rework concept. Negation Swarm could stay as is, even if it sucks that it does. Elemental Sandstorm would have to change as it exists for an ability that no longer would exist. I was thinking maybe an augment where the puncture and blast procs get enhanced to 90% inflicted damage reduction and 90% accuracy reduction, but that seems kinda evil?
I also opted not to remove the lifesteal on Inaros's one. I think it's pretty fine as is considering the conditionals it needs to achieve the lfiesteal.
I’ll appreciate any feedback; will try to get back to any as soon as I can.
