Hello Armies. It’s me again, Mr. Frog Hubient with another hero spotlight. And today we are going to feature a Melee Assassin Hero in the Heroes of the Storm universe. Qhira!
She is a sworn knight, and the holder of a singularity-shard. Her only desire is to find others who have survived the destruction of her home realm, Iresia. She works as a bounty hunter while she searches. This is despite her extraordinary skill.
For their beauty and technological innovation, the Nexus was renowned for Iresia’s ornate orbital sculptures. However, power and wealth can lead to conflict. Qhira, a famous warrior, fled when Iresia’s rival factions tore apart the realm, destroying its unity. Qhira now roams the Nexus with a segmented chainsword and makes a modest living as a bounty hunter, while searching for survivors. Qhira is a brutal Melee Assassin who can be used to both start and end fights. Qhira is a powerful burst damage-dealing Assassin, which makes her very efficient at taking out fragile Heroes. Qhira can trade with all enemy Assassins by stacking damage and healing with Blood Rage. Qhira is a skilled duo hunter and solitary bounty hunter.
Jade Martin, Senior Game Designer, proposed a hero with the Chainblade who could swing around their opponents. The developers created some concept art for Jade Martin’s idea. They fell in love immediately with it from both a design and artistic perspective. Her artistic design and gameplay were centered around the weapon, which influenced many of their decisions during development. The rest of her kit was easy to put together after they had designed her Chainblade. The team was able to create many new gameplay moments with her unique weapon. Kyle Dates explains that the idea of this hero moving around the battlefield so dramatically excited them. We couldn’t find any Blizzard characters that matched this identity so we decided to create a Nexus hero.
Lead Live Designer, Brett Crawford, talked with InvenGlobal about how Qhira came to be and why she was revealed: “We had this really cool idea for a hero with a chainblade who swings around the battlefield, a really flashy hero. We wanted to just bring her in alongside Orphea, but they are not necessarily related, so [her design] was really more focused on the kit and just being a really cool hero rather than having any ties to Orphea.” The design team didn’t mince words when it came to how Qhira was created. It all starts and ends with the chainblade. As there were no existing characters in the Blizzard universe that rocked the deadly weapon of choice, they decided to create a kit and hero around that. Orphea, on the other hand, was designed first then had a kit built around the concept.
Qhira’s E (Revolving Sweep) becoming disconnected from Unstoppable targets was the most elegant solution to several issues the developers were having during Qhira’s development. During a playtest game, the developers had a Qhira on one team and a Chen on the other. During the middle of the game in a heated team fight, Qhira used her Revolving Sweep on Chen and Chen used his Flying Kick on Qhira. Suddenly, Chen and Qhira both blasted off into the sky and disappeared off the map. This happened because of the way Qhira’s Revolving Sweep moves her around her target. It is constantly and instantaneously updating her position. Chen was never able to resolve his Flying Kick movement, and since he has a bit of elevation to it, they would fly into the sky. As more playtests came, they started finding this issue more and more. Kerrigan would leap to Qhira during Revolving Sweep and the same thing would happen. Varian’s Charge, Cassia’s Fend and Illidan’s Dive… The list went on and on. Clearly fixing each of these on a case by case basis would take a significant amount of time and effort and would probably still not cover all of the possible scenarios.
Qhira is the second original character to join the Heroes of the Storm roster. She’s original title was “Iresian Bounty Hunter ”, as seen in her press release documents.
Well, that’s it for Qhira. What do you think about this hero? Leave a comment below. Again, this is Mr. Frog and catch you in the next one.
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