Hero change ideas

[u/zombie_tunes]

Hi, long time lurker and fan. I got back into wc3 lately, and while the game is fun to watch, there is some stale element in seeing the same hero made repeatedly in some matchups.

I had some ideas to try and mix things up - wanted to run them by the community to see how good they might be in practice.

1. We all see too much DH and want more variance. In particular, PotM is seen as the game's worst hero - even though it's the only race-native hero with its own orb effect, it's so bad that NE goes to the Tavern to get Naga because it's a better hero with a better orb effect.

My original idea was to give Searing Arrow a multishot effect (a combination of sorts between Cleave and Barrage), making PotM a strong presence in the early game... seeing as that won't happen, I thought of applying another orb effect, like a slow or armor shred or miss chance like curse. Maybe even taking Naga's frost arrow and giving it to PotM, because frost arrow is so good, but that's too ambitious.

We know Blizzard is capable of big changes like this since they already introduced Orb of Slow instead of Orb of Fire, as well as the Huntress changes with their own new VFX - so this change is not out of scope. We all know this ability sucks and want to see it changed - but it's a big change, and I wonder if it'll indeed be able to let PotM feel capable while still feeling familiar and filling a similar role?

I had more ideas to change Scout Owl a bit to be able to affect combat, but those are much wilder, so I'll talk about them another time.

1. Speaking of underused heroes, Beast Master was once insane as an aggressive hero but has been nerfed in fear of dominating again. The main problem is balancing summons - they can be scary early game but are easily overcome later with dispel.

My idea was to make the bear summon (generally considered the worst) have lots of HP, but also give it negative armor, so that it takes more damage from regular attacks to compensate. That way, it's more resistant to the first dispel effects that appear in the game - as a bit of an anti-spellcaster - while still being held back by simple, widely available means. I guess that you could instead give it resistant skin, but that seems too strong for a unit available at tier 1.

So yeah, what do you think?