Orphea

Orphea, Heir of Raven Court, is a Ranged Assassin Hero, and the first Hero to be wholly original to the Heroes of the Storm universe. Rejecting the dark power her father had begun to consort with, Orphea tried to run away from the Raven Lord's influence. But after witnessing King's Crest fall to his machinations, she was convinced she needed to stand and fight. She now vows to protect the innocent--as a Hero of the Nexus. She was announced at BlizzCon 2018 and available for free to attendees and Virtual Ticket holders.

Background
Orphea's upbringing was lonely, but she found comfort and connection with ancestral magic. Orphea's mother left the family early in Orphea's life, fearing what would happen if her father Oberon, Raven Lord, tapped into the Dark Nexus. Oberon promised Orphea not to tap into this power, but he broke this promise, pushing Orphea away.

Later her father sends out Knights to find her.

While Deckard Cain wanders around the forests of Dragon Shire, he is attacked by those knights. Orphea joins the clash and helps Cain defeating the knights. Deckard Cain and Orphea team up to find a solution for the Dark Nexus threat raised by the Raven Lord. They come to Raena the Lady of Thorns and Realm Lord of Dragon Shire, for help and warn her about the danger coming. Raena calls on her greatest allies from across the lands and marches with them forward to battle the Raven Lord and his champions in Alterac Pass.

Later Orphea witnessed her father defeating the Lady of Thorns and causing the fall of King's Crest. Vowing to stop her father from hurting anyone else, she chose to rise up against him and become a hero in the Nexus.

After returning to Raven Court, Orphea confronted her father outside his tower. The two came to blows, and while he declared himself to be beyond Orphea's powers of "dead magic," she managed to strike his singularity. In the midst of battle, they engaged in telepathic communication, the Raven Lord explaining that there had to be order, that without it, everything would be lost. He disappeared back to his tower, his daughter declaring that she would never stop fighting him.

Gameplay
Orphea is a Ranged Assassin who dances around her enemies while using spells to empower her attacks.

Strengths

 * Damage
 * Zone control
 * Sustain
 * Dueling

Weaknesses

 * Poke
 * CC

Abilities

 * See Data page for a table of scaled values at key levels.

Development
In 2018 the developers knew that they would be bringing their final Blizzard universe (Warcraft) into the Nexus with the Alterac Pass Battleground and had a huge lineup of highly requested heroes that were being added to the game as well. So it felt like this was the best time for them to go back to their roots and introduce a Nexus-born hero. Creating a Nexus-born hero was a challenge for the developers, but it would be an important step in making HoTS more compelling as a standalone game. Although Heroes is a game that brings different Blizzard heroes together, it still has some non-traditional fantasy ideas like the Raven Lord and Lady of Thorns. These are the roots of Heroes, and where Orphea came from. The developers were extremely attracted to the phrase “the Raven Lord’s daughter”, and began to design a hero based on the concept. So they spent basically the 2018, between four web comics and even the Dark Nexus-themed event, to build her whole story and introduce her throughout the year.

The major challenges the Art Design team faced were Orphea needed to feel familiar, she needed to be unique, and she needed to be awesome. The original concept for Orphea came from the artist Oscar Vega. He started with the silhouette of a youthful young woman who's got this massive relic on her back that seems to be a focus that she uses to channel her powerful, dark energy.

One of the fundamental design goals of Orphea was to make her approachable for everyone. They didn't want to make her abilities overly complicated, they wanted players to kind of pick her up and understand how to play her. At the same time, they wanted that to be a character that had a lot of mechanical skill, a very high skill ceiling, so players could really master her. . Early in Orphea's design, they had some concept art that portrayed her as a dancer, so her initial base kit design had elements of dancing in it. They loved the idea of dancing in and out of combat, so initially, her Q ability (Shadow Waltz) forced her to dash forward, and her W ability (Chomp) caused Orphea to be knocked back baseline. They really loved this gameplay style, but their of our goals for Orphea was for her to be approachable by players of all skill levels. Having an ability that forced you to dash forward was causing some players to constantly overextend or miss their Shadow Waltz entirely, since there was a deadzone between the dash and damage areas. So they took a step back and decided to let the player control the dash direction by moving it to the end of the ability instead of the front. They added a delay before the damage to match the timing the ability had when the dash was at the beginning. This felt great and the team really loved it, but now that she could control her dash direction it felt like she had a bit too much mobility with the knockback on Chomp being baseline. There were also situations where you would be chasing down a low health enemy but your highest damage ability (Chomp) would force you backwards, causing you to miss out on the kill. So they decided to remove the knockback from the ability, but we had so much fun with it that we wanted to keep it in the form of a talent.

Orphea was "luxurious to animate" because her abilities had such long cast times. Orphea is also floating, which allowed the developers to be a little forgiving because they didn't have to worry about foot placement. Both allowed them to make her visuals really stand out.

Trivia

 * Orphea was first mentioned in Rise of the Raven Lord (April 2018). Her first appearance was in Secrets of the Storm (June 2018).
 * Orphea is voiced by Jeannie Tirado.
 * Orphea is a teenager; with the main value there being the acknowledgement of this being a time in her life where she's defining her beliefs as she steps into adulthood.
 * Orphea carries a relic crate on her back, with which she can channel the power of her ancestor. This is the "dead magic" her father refers to in the Heir of Raven Court cinematic.
 * The "monster" is a manifestation of Orphea’s deepest, subconscious feelings and as such it does not have a name – but throughout development, everyone called the creature "chomp".
 * One early description of Orphea during development was "dancer-like". While she is not quite that now, her animations have kept some of that grace.
 * Orphea is always hovering above the ground. Uniquely, she'll always face towards whoever she's attacking so long as she's in combat, giving her movement an otherworldly "possessed" feel.
 * Her hands glow purplish-pink when she has Chaos stacks.
 * Orphea's Slacker skin carries locker number 83, likely referring to her being the 83rd hero to be added.