He’s fun, but will probably get some tweaks
Heroes of the Storm is known for weird characters. It has Abathur, a hero that touts a playstyle not typically found in the MOBA genre, among other oddballs that bend the rules in interesting ways.
While the builder concept isn’t really new (turrets have been a thing since DOTA 1.0), Probius takes it and shifts the meta with his unique Protoss conceit.
Probius, as you could probably guess based on his gimmick as a Probe from the Starcraft series, warps in Protoss structures to help him fight. His main kit involves Pylons, which serve as vision-granting and mana-restoring wards. Just like Starcraft, Probius can summon Photon Cannons (read: turrets), but he needs to place them in a perimeter around a Pylon. He also sports a Distruption Pulse line skillshot, and Warp Rifts, which are a nine second area-of-effect slow that can be blown up by a Pulse. He can’t mount but is slightly faster than other heroes by default, and can use a “Z” escape similar to Sgt. Hammer.
There’s a lot going on here, and as expected, he’s a hero that requires a lot of setup and oversight to work. He’s easily one of the most polarizing characters I’ve seen on the PTR by a longshot when it comes to skill, as I’ve seen folks who have wracked up deaths with very little damage, and the exact opposite. I’ve been taking to him playing him more cautiously, setting up in lanes, pushing them, and setting up wards to combat ambushes if enemy heroes are missing on the map. If all else fails, you have a Z to boost away and two nine second slows (yep, Warp Rift holds two charges) at your disposal.
That’s why I think Probius is particularly devastating. He’s amazing at following through with wombo-combo enablers (read: where your teammates hold enemies in place so he can blow up Warp Rifts with his Pulse), and can push lanes with an insane amount of sustainability. While the common strategy is to cripple him by taking out his Pylons, if you can’t get to said Pylons due to a bad matchup, it can get really annoying.
Likewise, the cooldown is so short (14 seconds) he can just summon a new one if it gets destroyed, which is an instant warp-in cast (he can also have three at level 20 if he chooses). Pylon Overcharge, a heroic that turns Pylons into offensive turrets for 10 seconds, is likely the go-to (it also grants Pylons permanent shields, making them even more annoying to kill), Null Gate, which slows enemies with a barrier, is also useful in some situations (again, he always has a slow).
In short, he always has something to do with his current kit, which relies heavily on Warp Rift’s utility and crazy amounts of AOE damage. While it’s tough to say how he’ll be able to slot into the pro scene, I think he’ll be just fine in his current incarnation in most leagues or gametypes due to his tricky nature. He can easily punish players who are out of position at later levels, or enable high damage assassins on his own team. He’s an amazing team queue character, and another unique and welcome addition to the Nexus.
