Magik Preview

Ask and ye shall receive! Magik, our first-ever winner of a community vote for playable hero, is coming at the end of this month, and the last bits of visual polish and mechanics are being developed as we speak. Since we still have a bit of time before she'll appear on Test Center, we wanted to do a small preview of some of the things you can expect from Magik's power kit, but any and all of this is subject to change based on internal iteration and approvals.

To help prepare itemization for Magik - she will deal full Mental damage, and have supporting summons for builds that choose to use them.

Mutant Swordswoman

Magik’s first power tree focuses on the Soulsword’s power, and Magik’s skill in wielding it. We’ve overhauled all of her animations and visuals from her Team-Up’s default attacks, creating some flashy new strikes and slashes.

In addition to her melee Soulsword abilities, the first tree houses several powers highlighting Magik’s mutant ability to create teleportation discs. With these, she can teleport herself, fly, or teleport her enemies towards her for easy slicing and dicing.

Limbo Minions

Having rule over Limbo, Magik has the ability to call upon its denizens to do her bidding. The Team-Up version of Magik has displayed this ability by calling on the minor creatures, and this will be represented in the playable version as well. Magik will be able to call upon many of these creatures to form a battalion around her, though they will need to be often replaced when they perish.

However, in her playable incarnation, Magik can go above and beyond the minor creatures, calling even more powerful demons and creatures. Magik can opt into summoning either of these larger, more durable, and more damaging Major creatures, instead of a larger number of the Minor Limbo creatures.

Each minion summon power can be activated again, which instructs all of those minions to perform a unique attack, transforming the summon powers into cooldown layers. Magik also has some additional summoning tricks up her sleeve involving those that she slays with the Soulsword, but we’ll let you discover those when Test Center hits...

Dark Magic

As a sorceress, Magik’s arsenal also includes an array of magical enchantments and spells. Her third power tree will include high-utility debuffs and area clearing skills, focused on enhancing and supplementing her melee combat. For example, Magik can create a portal and summon up a large Bone Wall directly from Limbo, using it as cover against ranged attackers. Other powers include a debuff that causes Magik to restore health when she strikes those afflicted, an offensive attack that causes defeated enemies to explode, a large conical projectile area attack, and much more.

Mechanics

Magik’s secondary resource, “Command”, is a dynamic system that can be spent in three ways to allow players to customize their playstyle. Command is not a traditional resource that is spent and accrued regularly in combat. Instead, most players will find they set up their Command “loadout” once, then play for a duration before changing it.

• Command is consumed for each Limbo minion Magik controls. Smaller minions cost less Command, while the bosses cost more Command. The Command remains consumed so long as those minions are alive.

• After summoning minions, Magik can consume them, giving her a permanent buff effect for each minion. This retains the consumed Command, effectively turning it into a passive boost for Magik herself.

• A pair of toggled powers exist which will consume Command to directly increase the offensive potential of certain powers, granting them massive damage bonuses and cooldowns, creating new layers in her kit.

Using Command, any number of build options can exist. One player may go full Limbo minions, while another sacrifices them all for self-buffs. Another player may opt for a hybrid, using one of the extra cooldowns, and spend the rest of the Command to keep one of the Major Demons around. There are many combinations for different playstyles.

Theme

Illyana presented a unique opportunity to bring in a design I’ve been wanting to incorporate into Marvel Heroes for some time. Her powers and abilities include enchanted melee attacks, magical ranged/area attacks, and control over a host of minions. These skills were the perfect mold for a tribute and homage to a fan favorite classic aRPG class, while still creating our own interpretation of it that is balanced and supported within our game. I’ll leave it to the community and genre veterans to figure out just which class we took inspiration from once she hits Test Center...

Thanks for voting in the first community poll and bringing Magik to this year’s roster, and please join us when Magik hits Test Center later this month.