Video Game / Heroes of Newerth

Heroes of Newerth was a free-to-play Multiplayer Online Battle Arena game created by Frostburn Studios (formerly S2 Games), creators of the Savage game series. Envisioned as a Spiritual Successor to the popular Warcraft III custom map Defense of the Ancients (and with permission from its head developer, Icefrog), Heroes of Newerth combines the mod's mechanics, terrain and a large selection of its most popular characters with a specially designed game engine and S2's own additions and tweaks, resulting in a game resembling Aeon of Strife... but different.

The story of this game takes place after S2 Games' FPS/RTS hybrid game series, Savage: Humans and beasts have long waged war against each other in the post-apocalyptic Fantasy Kitchen Sink world of Newerth, but the demons they used to summon to fight against the other rebelled and formed the demonic Hellbourne, invading and corrupting everything in sight. The humans and beasts decided to abandon their current conflict and formed the Legion in order to fight them.

You can read certain story arcs for this game here. These stories reveal certain interactions between the characters, and more (that can't be found in-game).

After Dota 2 was released, Heroes of Newerth started to deviate further from DotA, creating its own identity by modifying their ported heroes to be more unique, and adding additional content.

In early 2019, Frostburn Games announced the game will be put in "Maintainence Mode", putting an indefinite suspension on development of new heroes and Alt Avatars. After over a decade since its release, the game servers were shut down on June 20, 2022. Private servers made by the community, however, can still be found somewhere in the net, with the most prominent one being 'Project Kongor'.

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This video game contains examples of:

• Action Girl: There are several female heroes.
  • As of patch 2.0.6. an alternative avatar named Helga Hammerstorm can be acquired.
  • And then at patch 2.6.21 a new heroine—not an alternative avatar—got added in the roster... named Solstice. This is her◊, with and without armor.
  • Bramble is a Strength hero and was released before Solstice, and is technically a female, even if she is a plant.
• After the End: According to the Excuse Plot outlined in the "Savage" games, modern day civilization had its downfall ages ago and in the far future humanity is once again on its rise to power but is no longer the single dominant species on the planet as the beasts of the land had evolved and become intelligent. Or, rather, it was going for dominance until the Hellbourne started their onslaught at which point it became a battle for survival and an alliance of convenience with the Beast Horde was formed to fight the daemons.
• Always Accurate Attack: No matter how fast you move, you can't dodge auto-attacks and unit-targeted projectiles with moving alone, you need evasion or abilities that can disjoint the projectile. And even then, evasion can be nullified by True Strike (like Savage Mace); and there are some spells that cannot be disjointed and can only be avoided by turning invulnerable or magic immune when the projectile hits.
• And I Must Scream: Torturer is the embodiment of this trope, having been transformed into pure destruction and torment in exchange for eternal life.
  • The souls that Soulstealer collects are doomed to an eternity of captivity and suffering.
• Anti-Villain: Artesia is only out to venture through the depths of Hell to find her lover after she was haunted with his death. She's on the Hellbourne side.
• An Ice Person: Glacius, more literally than most. He shatters into shards of ice upon death.
  • And then there's Ellonia.
• Announcer Chatter: "CHAMPION OF NEWERTH!"
  • "R-R-R-RAGEQUIT!" when a player quits the game after dying.
  • The "Flamboyant" announcer is even more funny/annoying, depending on whether you're on the winning side or not.
• Anti-Magic:
  • The cheap Mystic Vestments provides a magic armor bonus to the wearer. It can be upgraded to a Shaman's Headdresss and further into Barrier Idol (which can create a temporary barrier that blocks magical damage taken by friendly units and buildings).
  • Magic immunity (most commonly provided by Shrunken Head) prevents most status effects from affecting the affected unit.
  • Silences (notably Hellflower) prevents the target from casting active abilities for their duration.
  • A Null Stone blocks most spells targeted on the wearer or an ally once every 16 seconds.
• Anti-Structure: Since buildings are immune to the vast majority of abilities and have to be relatively slowly worn down with right-click attacks, in general abilities that can either damage buildings directly, provide minions (like Whispering Helm and Puzzlebox) or reduce armor (like Shieldbreaker and Daemonic Breastplate) count as this, allowing enemy structures to be brought down much faster.
• Armor Is Useless: Once Lodestone releases his Shatterstorm, this will happen to your armor (and Magic Armor) if you get hit. This applies to Lodestone, too.
• Artificial Limbs: A few Alt Avatars get some pretty cool replacements for their hands. Berzerker's Alt Avatar Gutbuster replaced his hand with an axe which doubles as a beer stein and Gunblade's Alt Avatar Tyr an Arm Cannon with a spear to hook himself to an enemy.
• Ascended Glitch: Monkey King's Heavenly Vault has him leap over a unit and push it behind him, and land and create a shockwave, and he can repeat this a second time. Both the shockwave and the unit lept over have the same damage source. Initially, Monkey King's burst damage was unusually high, which is because the the shockwave lasted long enough that you can push the same target into the first shockwave to double-dip on damage. Instead of reducing the duration of the shockwave, the damage calculation was changed so that each subsequent damage taken from Heavenly Vault was halved.
• Ascended Meme: After the meme "Too bad, it's me Blacksmith!" caught on among the playing population, Blacksmith acquired the voiceline "Too bad!"
  • Also the skeletons rape you in 3 seconds meme is referenced in the tooltip for Forsaken Archer's skeletons skill.
• Attack Reflector: Barbed Armor causes 80% of damage inflicted to the user to be taken by the source of the damage as well when activated.
• Attack Speed Buff: Activating Elder Parasite massively boosts attack speed in exchange for causing the user to take more damage. It is the most cost-effective attack speed and DPS item in the game and is usually built early by heroes who especially benefit from attack speed like Pestilence or Chronos.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Doombringer, an item that gives 250 damage. Unfortunately, it drops upon death. Anyone can pick it up.
  • Also, unlike all other items, it can't be destroyed. Once a Doombringer enters the game, it stays in the game.
• Ax-Crazy: Most Hellbourne heroes, some Legion, and almost all players once the game starts.
• Back Stab: Night Hound's specialty.
• Bad Ass Adorable: The Chipper, a furry chiprel piloting a killer steamwork mech.
• Badass Normal: Chipper, Engineer, Legionnaire, Pandamonium, Rampage, Flint Beastwood and Predator get by without any supernatural abilities.
• Badass Long Coat: Witch Slayer. Fitting, as he's rather similar to Solomon Kane.
• Bayonet Ya: Gunblade's pistols have blades attached to them. After Version 3.2, he finally puts them to good use.
• Bears Are Bad News: Wildsoul and his pet bear, Booboo.
• BFS: Maliken's Sword of the Damned, Shadowblade itself, Kane's sword, and many more.
• Bigger Is Better: Pebbles starts out tiny and gets bigger every time he puts points in his ultimate skill, eventually becoming the largest hero in the game.
• Black-and-White Morality: The Legion are good. The Hellbourne are evil. No question about it.
  • Then again, if the descriptions for some of the alt avatars (especially the Rise of the Neutrals avatars and the more recent ones as of November 5th, 2014), this trope may be subverted, as apparently the Legion can be rather selfish at least some of the time. For example, see Blood Knight below.
• Blood Knight: Every hero is out for battle and blood in this game and are not above killing their own. Many players of the game also exhibit traits.
• Blow You Away:
  • Zephyr's Gust and Typhoon
  • Tempest's Elemental Void
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Shrunken Head gives awful stats for an item that costs 3900 gold (10 Strength and 24 attack damage can be purchased much more cheaply), and all its active ability does is turn you magic immune for a few seconds. Sure, 1k+ damage crits, stat items, and effects like bash and attack modifiers are so appealing because they look flashy, scale well with carry abilities and make your hero so much better, but without the boring Shrunken Head the enemy team can and will make you useless by chain-disabling/kiting/silencing/disarming/whatever-ing you to oblivion. If you're a carry player, you need to get used to building Shrunken Head as a first or second item in 90% of your games.
  • Wards. Perhaps the least flashy items in the game, all they do is grant vision over an area and have to be replaced periodically. However, vision is extremely important for making good tactical decisions and knowing which fights to pick, and catching a glimpse of an incoming gank squad often spells the difference between life and death. There is a reason why entire guides have been written about how to place and remove wards, and in higher level games, you'll rarely see them in stock in the shop for more than a minute.
  • Blight Stones and Health Potions aren't especially flashy or abnormal, but are a necessity for almost all lanes due to early harassment. In most cases, if you don't buy neither Blight Stones nor Health Potions, you can and will be bullied out of lane (unless if you are a bottle-rushing mid), granting an enormous advantage to your lane opponent.
  • Mana Potions are simple, cheap, and a must-have starting item for any spellcasting hero; when your effectiveness depends almost entirely on your mana pool, being able to top up without returning to base means you can be that much better at helping your team out.
  • The humble Minor Totem is extremely cheap and gives very low stats, but it's also the most cost-efficient stat item in the game (compare a Blessed Orb, which gives 10 times the bonuses for 420 times the cost). As a result, it's the best way to give heroes more stats in the early game for a low cost, and most heroes (except for bottle-rushing mids) will spend their leftover starting gold on Minor Totems until they run out of slots. Some new players often think that the Minor Totem is useless and their money should be saved for bigger items... without realizing that the exceptional advantage granted by the cheap stats will help them win fights and snowball the game in their favor.
  • Tablet of Command has a simple ability which only pushes a single unit. While it is one of the least flashy items in the game, the importance of good positioning in HoN grants Tablet of Command enormous utility from escaping, chasing, getting into position, saving a teammate, to even pushing a single enemy hero into the middle of your team and letting him get picked off. Unless if (s)he needs an important core item first or has to transition into a semi-carry, it's never a bad idea for a support to build a Tablet of Command.
  • The Homecoming Stone, a cheap consumable item that simply lets you teleport to an allied building after channeling for a few seconds. It's worth much more than its weight in gold by minimizing your downtime when heading back to base for healing, letting you respond more quickly to enemy dives or pushes, and getting out of a bad situation. As such, you'll almost never see a hero leaving home without one or two.
  • Marchers simply increase the wearer's movement speed. Given how important mobility is in this game, they're a core item for every single hero.
  • An upgrade to Marchers is Post Haste, which are initially the inverse of this trope due to their cost and limited benefits (unlimited TP's, when Homecoming Stones are cheaper and often just as good). One element of them, however, definitely counts - they give the fastest permanent movespeed in the game ^note other boots give 45 move speed, one is 70 if you're not being attacked, but Post Haste gives 105, 150 when out of combat. Simply being able to run really quickly can be incredibly useful, from arriving a few seconds earlier to a fight and making a bigger difference, to chasing down an enemy, or escaping from one. They also are a legitimate replacement for stones late in the game, when most towers are down, giving you much fewer targets for TP'ing to with a stone^note if all your regular towers are down, many attempts to TP out of your base will only end with you just outside your own gates. At this point, stones are only useful for returning to base, not getting back into the fight. The Post Haste allows you to target friendly creeps, giving you a much larger potential range of targets (the second upgrade to them allows you to target friendly heroes as well).
  • The Power Supply. Its stat bonuses and ability aren't very spectacular, but it's also dirt cheap for an item that's surprisingly good at both saving lives and squeezing out an extra spell or two's worth of mana, since its charges are very easy to accumulate in ganks and skirmishes and can give you up to 150 burst healing and 225 mana when topped up, which can be huge in the early-game and useful well into the mid-game.
  • Any ability that gives sight of a unit. Though the better ones give True Sight, even the ones that don't are incredibly useful, as among other things, it prevents juking (dodging through trees to break line-of-sight, so that other players have to constantly re-attack the target). Simply being able to see your enemy as they try to run away can be the difference between them just barely escaping and being finished off.
  • Range. Abilities, talents, and items that increase your attack or spellcasting range may not sound like much, but they can mean the difference between winning and losing a team fight, because positioning is incredibly important for supports and the ranged carries, and being just a little further away at the very least makes it take more time for the enemy to close the distance, and at best puts them on the other side of a cliff, where they can't be reached at all.
  • Fortified Bracer, Amulet of Exile, and Soulscream Ring are little more than cheap, early-game Stat Sticks that give minor Attribute bonuses and some other numbers on the side, but they're also very efficient stat boosts for their cost and can give a real boost in the laning phase.
• Brother–Sister Team: After the Hellbourne appeared, Jeraziah and Ophelia put aside their differences and joined forces.
• Breakable Power-Up: A Mana Potion, Health Potion, the healing from the Soultrap, or a Regeneration rune will instantly be cancelled, and Portal Key will be put on a 3-second cooldown, if the recipient takes damage from an enemy hero or Kongor.
• Bubble Gun / Magic Staff: The staff of the hero Pearl shoots bubbles. Yep, bubbles.
• The Cameo: Several popular The Game Station YouTubers voiced alt-avatars:
  • TotalBiscuit voices Steampunk Disciple, an alternate skin for the Corrupted Disciple.
  • Jesse Cox of OMFGcata voices "Spiriticus", a (male) alternate skin for Nymphora.
  • Two announcer packs feature the voice of Jon St. John and Samuel L. Jackson.
• Captain Ersatz: The game itself is a replication of DotA, updated to a much more flexible engine and with lots of online multiplayer convenience. Those days it's split off much more from DotA and has established its own metagame and many different heroes.
• Card-Carrying Villain: A lot of Hellbourne members are hammy, but Klanx is the textbook example of one, and combines it with Evil Genius and some Dastardly Whiplash.
• Cast from Hit Points: Accursed's Cauterize takes half the damage dealt/healed from his own health. Maliken can activate Enchanted Flames to deal more damage but take damage with every strike.
  • All of Amun Ra's abilities cost % of his max health to cast and none of them actively use mana.
• Casting a Shadow: The Dark Lady and Soulstealer.
• Chainsaw Good: Chipper's Sawblade Showdown.
• Chaste Hero: Jeraziah has rejected his share of suitors and temptresses, but he has his reasons. The reason being that a prophecy claims his fall to temptation will condemn his soul to Hell and bring about the Third Corruption.
• Color-Coded Characters: Legion's player colors are all bright and bold: blue, teal, purple, yellow, orange. Hellbourne's colors are darker and subdued: pink, gray, light blue, green, brown.
• Cooldown Manipulation: Comes in two main flavours:
  • Restoration Stone completely refreshes the cooldowns of all your spells and items (except that of other Restoration Stones), but is a very expensive item, costs a lot of mana and has a long cooldown itself.
  • Grimoire of Power reduces the cooldown of all your spells and items by 20%.
• Combat Parkour: Dashing through enemies and leaping over buildings and people's heads, a good Monkey King player can dish out a lot of damage while being very hard to catch.
• Combat Medic: Healers don't kick as much ass as everyone else, but they kick some ass.
• Competitive Multiplayer: Teams of up to five players each are pitted against each other.
• Critical Existence Failure: Heroes fight as they still do when they are at full health when they lose health.
• Crosshair Aware: Scout's Marksman Shot and Flint Beastwood's Money Shot will put a bullseye above his target while he's charging the ability.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff:
  • Shieldbreaker causes the wielder's attacks to reduce the target's armor, causing them to take more physical damage; and Daemonic Breastplate carries an aura that reduces the armor of all enemies nearby. Certain heroes also have abilities to reduce enemy armor.
  • On the magical side of things, Lex Talionis reduces the magic armor of the user and target; Armor of the Mad Mage reduces nearby enemies' magic armor; Void Talisman turns yourself immune to physical damage but much weaker to magic damage.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Try pressing Alt+QQ in HoN. Then switch to DotA and do it again. Plus, spells in HoN all have QWER as hotkeys, rather than varying from hero to hero. So even if your favorite DotA hero happens to be in HoN as well, chances are the initial hotkey confusion will throw you off.
  • Rather, if you're switching from HoN back to DotA. For those coming from the mod, standardised hotkeys are a godsend. Of course, you can change the bindings in-game, so its pretty much averted here.
  • Thankfully, Dota 2 uses the QWER hotkeys as the standard, so it's not so much an issue anymore.
• Dark Action Girl: The Dark Lady, Fayde, Forsaken Archer, and Calamity, just to name a few.
• Dark Fantasy: A setting where the Legions of Hell is marching towards humanity and beastmen? Check. Weapons at the store that are mostly created by the forces of Hell? Check. Being forced to kill your own men? Definitely a Dark Fantasy setting.
• Darker and Edgier: Zig-zagged. Even when compared to other MOBA, this game stands out as one of the most macho hardcore Western setting offered. It's a Dark Fantasy played really straight with little to no room of humors, unless you turn on some of the alternate skins. Betrayals are abound where certain heroes switch sides (but a lot of times, it's Legion to Hellbourne) Even moreso, the game's own lighting is darker than even Dota 2, giving an even gloomier atmosphere as you play the game and had hard time in adjusting your sight. However, the characters like to also spew out puns or memes.
• Death Dealer: Tarot attacks by throwing cards, and thanks to her ultimate, said cards can end up being the hardest-hitting autoattack among any other heroes. She even has an Alt Avatar named after the trope.
• Deal with the Devil: Torturer was once a mortal who, while dying, made a pact with the Hellbourne to serve them in exchange for eternal life. To ensure his loyalty without the distraction of physical temptations, the Hellbourne stripped the man of his physical body leaving the pure energy of destruction, agony, and hate.
• Death Seeker: Accursed will charge into battle, hoping to be finally released from his searing pain. Unfortunately, mortal blows will instead heal Accursed!
  • Torturer gasps "At last..." when he dies and is released from demonic dominion and eternal pain.
• Defog of War: A Ward of Sight provides vision in a large area around itself.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Behemoth is a shining example of this. His fissure creates a huge crevice that neither team can cross. A skilled player can use this to create devastating results for the enemy team. An unskilled player often winds up messing up kills by blocking their own team off, or even accidentally trapping them and getting them killed.
• Dishing Out Dirt: Pebbles and Behemoth's are more solid, and Sand Wraith and Nomad's are more grainy.
• Distracted by the Shiny:
  Bladeknight 5: Probably the biggest thing for me when I started playing Ho N, was that I got distracted by all the shiny graphics, I'd be like "Woah that spell is really - CRAP I'm dead." and my team would be like, "Why'd you sit there?" and I would be like, "Ummm... Lag?" [1]
• Doppelgänger Attack: Circe can create several illusions, be it hers or anyone else's. She can even turn into a copy of you, down to the last detail!
• Double-Edged Buff: Activating Elder Parasite improves the user's attack speed, movement speed, and lifesteal, but causes them to take more damage.
• Drunken Master: Well, there's that one hero...
• Dual Wielding: Blacksmith with his dual hammers, the Dark Lady with two katars, Madman with a pair of claws, and Swiftblade with his dual katanas. Flint Beastwood uses dual shotguns.
  • You can combine Firebrand, Icebrand, and Lightbrand with each other into one item. This only counts to the trope if you have two of the three. Having all three will combine them into a single sword called the Dawnbringer.
• Earthquakes Cause Fissures: Behemoth's appropriately-named Fissure.
• Eldritch Abomination: Cthulhuphant, the Rift Stalker Grinex plus all the other Rift creatures.
• Emergency Energy Tank: Eating Bananas instantly restores 2500 health and 1500 mana, which constitutes a significant percentage of the average core hero's health and mana even in the late game. For this reason, it is often compared to a second Token of Life, and is especially prized by heroes dependent on a Super Mode that does not persist beyond death. It is also only dropped by Kongor from his third death onwards, making it far rarer than any other healing item in the game (most games end before five Kongor kills).
• Enemy Mine: When the Hellbourne threw down, the Human Legion and Beast Horde ended their war and joined forces to fight against the demons.
  • Magebane is allowed to help fight against the Hellbourne - if not for the war, the priests of Sol would have burned Magebane at the stake as a heretic.
  • Also, Prisoner 945 is well... a prisoner from the dungeons of The Legion's capital, who was imprisoned for leading the rebellion of the Titans. He was released to give Legion another hero that will fight for them, with his chains on him still intact; promising him freedom from the chains if he does well in their fight against the Hellbourne.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Both played straight and subverted. Some of the heroes who are known by their titles do have given names (such as Putra the Defiler and Valreia the Riftwalker), while others are only called by their titles (like Prisoner and Ravenor).
  • Recently, the Puppet Master's name is revealed to be "Falow" in the description of the Raving Madman alt.
• Evil Chancellor: Pestilence was once a chancellor to Moon Queen before joining the Hellbourne for power.
• Evil Weapon: Shadowblade.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Many hero names. Devourer, Hammerstorm, and Pyromancer, to name a few.
• Expy: Being an update of DotA, a lot of the heroes have DotA counterparts. Some are fairly obvious (Moon Queen ~ Luna Moonfang, Pyromancer ~ Lina Inverse, Soul Reaper ~ Necrolyte, Keeper of the Forest ~ Treant Protector), but others (Plague Rider ~ Lich, Pharaoh ~ Clockwerk Goblin, Pestilence ~ Slardar, Rampage ~ Barathrum, Witch Slayer ~ Lion) are a bit more subtle.
  • Myrmidon is an expy of the infamous Magikarp from Pokemon
    • "Myrmidon uses Taunt on newbie." followed by "It's super effective!"
    • Made even funnier when you realize Gyarados frequently used Taunt.
    • Here's a list of the Expies.
• Face–Heel Turn: A whole bunch, either in-lore or just to free up space in the hero selection slot.
  • The Blood Hunters left the Beast Horde for the Hellbourne, knowing that they'd be able to drink more blood serving the demons.
  • Corrupted Disciple once was a priest of Sol, before he was, well, corrupted, and joined the Hellbourne to serve their unholy energy instead of Sol's light.
  • Demented Shaman betrayed the Beast Horde after gaining access to their holiest secrets to join the Hellbourne.
  • Forsaken Archer, in life, was a woodland huntress. After being raped and killed by a spurned suitor, she was revived by the Hellbourne to carry out her revenge on the men of Newerth.
  • Hellbringer, a warlock addicted to demon magic, left the Legion to join the Hellbourne and became the most despised man on Newerth.
  • Maliken, once the grand leader of the Legion, mysteriously vanished one day. Now he leads the Hellbourne to fight against the very Legion he was once part of.
  • Pestilence once served the Moon Queen, but after realizing that he could never become ruler, he left the Moon Warriors for the Hellbourne and a chance at power.
  • Myrmidon was in the Legion for a few months, but once someone found out he was a kind of water daemon, he joined the Hellbourne.
  • Prophet was a Legion hero for a while, but once people have realized the dire consequences of his pacts, he defected to the Hellbourne.
  • Glacius had this happen to him twice. Initially, Glacius was a Hellbourne hero, but some time later he was changed to a Legion hero with a different lore. Some time afterwards, he became a Hellbourne hero again, with his old lore.
• Fake Difficulty: A complaint brought up fairly often about the game is that the shop grid layout and user interface are unnecessarily complicated.
  • The shop UI was remade to be more user friendly, but some think that it was made less user friendly, although those complaints died within a week or two of its introduction when people got over the whole They Changed It, Now It Sucks! thing.
• Fan Disservice: Defiler is fairly busty, but rotting and undead.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: During the localization process for HoN China, the lore was completely reworked into an ultimate showdown of good and evil between gods, mythical creatures, and Public Domain characters. While a few characters didn't need any changes and some got away with a simple name change, a good number of heroes were replaced by their alt avatars, and many got completely brand new ones during the process.
  • This more or less applies to the regular game, since most of those alt avatars are made available as well.
• Fanservice: Andromeda, Fayde, Ophelia are all practically naked and very prone to... physics.
• Flash Step: Magebane can blink using Flash, as well as Wretched Hag using her Flash of Darkness. Using the Portal Key will allow any hero to blink over a distance.
• Fertile Feet: Nymphora and Ophelia.
• Finishing Move: Legionnaire's Decapitate and Soul Reaper's Demonic Execution.
• Fog of War: Get those wards up!
• Forced Transformation: The item Kuldra's Sheepstick turns the target into chattering teeth. Pollywog Priest turns the enemy in a cute lil' bullfrog. Witch Slayer shrinks people!
• For Great Justice: As the Corrupted Disciple says, "For... ME".
• Friend to All Living Things: Ophelia, the Queen of the Beast Horde.
• From Bad to Worse: Heroes of Newerth started as a war between men and beasts versus the demons, the event known as the "Second Corruption". Since then, more parties got involved in this war and the situation more complicated.
  • First, gods have since began intervening in the war after a reawakened Amun-Ra rallied the lesser gods into the war.
  • The Riftwalker accidentally opens an uncontrollable portal to the Rift, creating a threat so great that Legion and Hellbourne had to team up to contain the eldritch abominations pouring out from it.
  • Calamity commits suicide to transport herself to Hell, outwits the three judges and the guardian dragon and opens the vault containing all the souls of the damned and unleashes to the world, starting the Third Corruption.
  • The war attracts the attention of the Artificers, a race of Planet Looters seeking planets to siphon all matter from, which also attracts the attention of counsel of aliens that resist the Artificers, bring to Newerth new technology to uplift them to fight the Artificers.
  • Finally, the corruption gets so intense that it awakens Apex, a primeval evil entity who had been waiting since eternity deep within the core of the planet, emerging to end all life on Newerth.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: The Madman.
  "Others say he is a man, just a man, but driven mad by the endless carnage he has witnessed."
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: In the world of Newerth, gods do exist, but their power depends largely on faith. Currently Sol is the most worshiped god and is omnipotent, while the other gods, having been mostly forgotten, are about as strong as the heroes. While Amun-Ra isn't an evil god, he was able to be summoned by the Hellbourne as a corrupt version of his true form because of this.
  • Of course, Amun-Ra would later rise again in his true form as the Egyptian god Ra; see Heel Face Turn below.
• Green Thumb: Keeper of the Forest, Deadwood, Nymphora, and Bramble.
  • Subverted by Deadwood really; ripping trees out of the ground as weapons? Stampeding through forests and taking their lifeforce to speed himself up?
  • Runes of the Blight, in its unused info, saps the life force of a tree to restore health. It's supposedly "evil", but it's so useful they don't mind it.
• Good is Not Nice: Legion might be the good guys but they sure aren't the nice ones.
  • Even if Jeraziah is Sol's chosen, he is not above playing dirty. In particular, Jeraziah personally visited Midas's kingdom to recruit him to the Legion, he had a back-up plan in case he refused: he would've pillaged his castle and kept him as a gold-producing slave.
• Gratuitous Ninja: Silhouette, although she's lacking in the stealthiness department.
• Guest Fighter: Aluna is one, but not many players know this. ^note To clarify, Aluna was added into Ho N as a promotional character for a comic, but she's far better known as a character in the game.[/[note]]
• Guns Akimbo: Flint Beastwood and Gunblade.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Night Hound is rumored to have "unnatural parentage".
  • Kane's part-beast lineage resulted in his parent being hunted down and killed by the Legion during the war of Man and Beast. That, and being taught by Maliken to despise monarchy only fed his resolve to permanently dethrone Jeraziah.
• Healing Potion: Drinking a Health Potion provides a hero with rapid HP regeneration for 8 seconds.
• Heel–Face Turn: In the closed beta days, Glacius and Armadon were in the opposite team, with different lores.
  • For one patch, Flux and Grinex were placed in the other team on release.
    • According to this, one Arachna (apparently there are more, if one sentence in this is anything to go by), Balphagore, Gemini, the Forsaken Archer, Kraken, and one Electrician were reconstructed using clockwork and fought alongside the Legion against the Hellbourne. Then, in this story, Amun-Ra became Risen Ra and sided against the Hellbourne (but especially against Anubis, formerly Pharaoh).
• Humans Are Bastards: According to lore, an incident exhibiting this is why Ophelia left the Legion to become Queen of the Horde.
• Human Popsicle: Temporarily, if Glacius imprisons you in ice. Try it on a large target like Pebbles, or even Kongor!
• Ice Queen: Ellonia is the proclaimed Ice Queen. Ironically, she's one of the few Northerners who joined the Legion for non-selfish reasons.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Devourer.
  Devourer: "The best things in life are devoured!"
  • Balphagore, too, but only the dead ones.
• I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: The Chipper would make a good pet... if not for the killer mech.
• In a Single Bound: Chronos's Time Leap, Predator's Venomous Leap, and Valkyrie's Courageous Leap.
  • Sir Benzington's Knightfall lets him jump into an enemy from a very long range, and with a Staff of the Master, he can leap from all the way across the entire map.
• I Need A Drink: Engineer says a variation of this if you give him a move order.
  • Before Drunken Master's Drink was remade to give charges passively, he literally did need a drink every couple of seconds so he can have his enhanced skills up.
• Instant Armor: Just about any of the dozens of items or skills that give an armor boost when used. Also applies to damage-absorbing shields.
• "Instant Death" Radius:
  • Towers deal tremendous damage to heroes early in the game, making them a safe haven for heroes on their side during the laning phase; as a result, tower-diving is never a good idea unless you have a good plan. However, their damage is static while heroes scale over the course of a game, and their lack of health regeneration means they will get worn down over time; as the game goes late, you'll be more focused on protecting your towers from enemies.
  • The fountains on each side are capable of attacking, and can kill even well-farmed enemy heroes in seconds, in order to discourage spawn-camping. Of course, certain heroes can withstand fountain fire if well-farmed enough, and if you're being fountain-camped by one of these heroes, you've probably lost anyway.
• Instant-Win Condition: World Tree/Sacrifical Pit destroyed? Game over, no matter how many enemy heroes you and/or your team shredded.
• Invisibility: Many sources. Scout can Vanish, Night Hound has Invisibility, Keeper of the Forest can Camouflage himself or his teammates, Madman can Stalk in the shadows, Fayde can activate Reflection, Revenant can use Essence Shroud on one or more allies, and the item Assassin's Shroud will cloak the user when activated. Grinex can go invisible at least 3 times in succession.
• Item Crafting: Maintained from DotA. You can combine base items into more-powerful items using recipes. There are well over five dozen recipes.
• It's Up to You: Solo mid gankers generally control the game up until lategame, where they pass the reins to the team's carry who will seal the victory almost singlehandedly.
  • In the mean time, supports will place wards around the map and help out their teammates in whatever ways they can all game.
  • And carries will farm up to secure a victory when the game goes for too long, initiators will try and give their team their five-man kill that can turn the game around, and pushers will win their team map control to make their jobs easier. So really, the lesson here is to never trust your teammate to not throw the game.
• Kill Steal: An essential part of playing the game.◊
• Lady of War: Moon Queen is in fact an actual queen.
• Large Ham: The announcer, and about half the hero voices.
  • Devourer: YOU'RE MINE!
  • Blacksmith in particular stands out. "LET'S ROLL THE DICE!"
  • Jeraziah's Alt Avatar, Pride, is this.
  • Just listen to the tutorial.
• Legions of Hell: The Hellbourne, naturally.
• Level Grinding: From 1 to 25.
• Light Is Not Good: The item Mock of Brilliance releases burning light that damages enemies near the carrier.
• Light 'em Up: Jeraziah's Inner Light. Also Moon Queen's Moon Beam and Moon Finale spells.
• Lightning Bruiser: Armadon, Pestilence, and Rampage, three Strength heroes that are rather agile.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Inverted. Nukers (wizards) are very powerful from early to mid, quickly dropping off during mid- and late-game. Carries (warriors) tend to be very weak early game, eventually becoming a monster late game, killing heroes in 2-3 hits.
• Living Shadow: Fayde conjures these as a means of attack.
• Luck-Based Mission: Casting Blacksmith's Fireball. Will you do as little as 275 damage... or as much as 1100?
• Macross Missile Massacre: Chipper's Rocket Barrage. Even more with Artillery's LRM.
  • Magic Missile Storm: Artesia + a fully channeled Dance of Death [[note]]Reduces her next 4 Arcane Missile's cooldown to a measly half-second + Essence Projection^note Copies Artesia's spells + tons of Mana = This.
• Magic Knight: Lore-wise, Lord Salforis is feared as both a powerful general and a necromancer.
• Magikarp Power: All "carry" heroes, intended to merely survive the early game and then dominate the late game.
  • Myrmiddon uses the same Magikarp Power but literally. One of its skills is named Magic Carp and its info even used to say this : "Magic Carp use Splash !!!"
  • Myrmiddon as a whole IS an expy of Magikarp and a Shout Out of Pokemon after all.
• Master of Illusion: Circe is built around this theme. Not only can she go invisible and create a decoy of herself to elude enemies, she can create illusions of any hero, which may cause unaware enemies to waste a valuable skill on them or bait them into the perfect ganking spot.
• Making a Splash: Kraken literally makes them with one of his skill.
• Meaningful Name: Loads and loads.
• Me's a Crowd: Sand Wraith's Mirage, or when a hero activates the Geometer's Bane.
• Mind over Matter: Main theme of Kinesis' skills.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Chiprels, represented by The Chipper.
• Money Multiplier:
  • Alchemist's Bones is the most straight example of this trope in the game: an item with relatively weak stats whose active ability simply kills a creep, granting more XP and gold than if the creep was killed normally. It is almost always built early in a game to increase a hero's gold and/or XP income, and its only utility in a fight is the ability to instantly kill a creep minion of Ophelia or another hero that builds Whispering Helm.
  • Some other items (namely Runed Cleaver, Thunderclaw, and Mock of Brilliance) can also quickly bolster the owner's income, but they do this by helping the hero clear creeps faster instead of directly providing bonus gold like Alchemist's Bones.
  • Some heroes like Salomon or Goldenveil have abilities that increase their income. Others like Hammerstorm have abilities or talents that provide some kind of cleave or multi-hit that allows them to take out lots of creeps quickly.
• Mooks: Lane creeps.
• More Dakka: Ultimate skills seem to have this effect, or rather most of them.
  • Artillery has multiple Dakkas in the form of missiles of various kinds.
• Ms Fan Service: All hail Ophelia, Queen of the Beast Horde.
  • The Hellbourne counterpart would be Fayde, who is practically naked.
  • Also, Empath, with her G-string of war.
• Multi-Ranged Master: Master of Arms has two guns, a Pulse Cannon and a Repeater. All his other skills change based on which gun you have out, and each gun gives his attacks a different effect.
• Mummy: Pharaoh.
• My Nayme Is: Fayde.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Hellbourne.
  • The Madman, Soulstealer, Hellbringer, Soul Reaper, Torturer, Devourer. Yikes!
  • The Legion also has a couple of examples: Pyromancer, Witch Slayer, Predator, and Behemoth.
  • Lord Salforis.
• Necromancer: Lord Salforis is well-versed in mastery over souls, and it is said he gathers the corpses of fallen Legion soldiers and harvests their souls to add them to his private undead army.
  • Gravekeeper and Deadlift have the ability to raise the dead, but they're far from the typical depiction of necromancers. Gravekeeper is much more lowly and shares the same diet as his own zombies. Deadlift is a hulking brute of a former-man encased in an incinerating armor.
• Neutral No Longer: Many heroes in the Legion stayed out of the Human Legion/Beast Horde conflict, but when the Hellbourne showed up, they joined the Legion to defend their homeworld.
  • The Rise of the Neutrals Alt Avatar sets are literally this; Neutrals that gained hero-level powers and joined the Legion.
• Noob: Common parlance in the community.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • Grimoire of Power received a rework in 4.7.2 where it gained magic damage lifesteal with an active ability that increases it. The next patch nerfed the item in almost every way, but was deemed way more powerful on Ravenor than any other hero in the game that they made the lifesteal 25% less effective on Ravenor, and nobody else.
  • Moira's Mana Sunder completely drains the target's mana for a few seconds before it regenerates back to how much they had before. It also lowers their max mana by 90% temporarily, so if you're thinking of comboing Mana Sunder with Magebane's ult to nuke them, you're out of luck.
• Off with His Head!: One of Legionnaire's responses as you issue any commands except for attack. More like:
  Legionnaire: Off with their heads!
  • If Kane gets a kill on Jeraziah, pop goes the king's head.
• One-Man Army: Once carries farm up the right items, they become this.
• Ornamental Weapon: When's Hammerstorm ever gonna use that sword he keeps on the back of his waist?
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Engineer. To clarify: he drinks heavily, has a Scot accent, a beard, and uses steampunk tech.
  • This is a Shout-Out to the Pandaren Brewmaster in Warcraft III. "I bring PANDA-MONIUM!"
• People Puppets: Puppet Master.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Night Hound, Scout, and Madman are all diminutive yet can be lethally effective.
  • Pebbles starts out pint-sized and eventually becomes huge.
• Playing with Fire: Accursed, Blacksmith, Magmus and Pyromancer.
  • Hellbringer's Ultimate summons the fire-demon, Malphas.
• Poisoned Weapon: Bushwack applies his Jungle Toxin to not just his weapons, but to all his items. Even on magical things like Chain Lightning.
• Poor Communication Kills: The team with superior communication will almost always win the match.
• Powered Armor: Corrupted Disciple. When he dies, the armor sucks him into it!
  • Also Flux, to the point where it isn't quite clear how much flesh is left in that armor. It allows him to manipulate magnetism.
• Pungeon Master: About half the cast have a whole array of voiced puns, give or take a few.
• Puppeteer Parasite: Parasite can infest Neutrals and take over their body.
• Rage Quit: Announced in BIG BOLD LETTERS whenever someone disconnects shortly after a death.
• Rain of Arrows: Forsaken Archer's Crippling Volley.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something:
  • Jeraziah, the Leader of the Legion.
  • Ophelia, the Queen of the Beast Horde.
  • Moon Queen, the Queen of the Moon Warriors.
  • Monarch. It's in her name.
• Schizo Tech: Magic is back in full swing and mankind is rediscovering lost technologies of the old, and both factions are experimenting in combining the two. For example, Lodestones are mass-produced robot soldiers powered by demonic possession.
• Screw Destiny: Back when Calamity was a sister in the Sacred Order, she felt it was her destiny to be at Jeraziah's side, but was rejected because Jeraziah thought that she was only tricking him into fulfilling a prophecy that will condemn him and start the Third Corruption. After dabbling into the dark arts a bit too much, she takes the drastic measure of sending herself to Hell and kickstart the Third Corruption by opening Hell's vault of souls and taking over its dragon guardian, just so she could have Jeraziah for herself. Jeraziah might not fulfilled his end of the prophecy, but the Third Corruption is happening because he tried to avoid it.
• Sentry Gun: Engineer's Steam Turret.
• Sibling Rivalry: According to lore, Jeraziah and Ophelia were on opposite sides of a war between the Legion and the Horde before the Hellbourne appeared to throw a wrench into things.
• Shock and Awe: Corrupted Disciple, Electrician, Dr. Repulsor, Ravenor, and Thunderbringer.
  Electrician: Shock and awe!
  Corrupted Disciple: It's electric.
• Silver Bullet: Witch Slayer's Silver Bullet.
  • And not only effective against werewolves!
• Sinister Scythe: Fayde's weapon of choice.
• Space Master: Riftwalker, whose skills include ripping space and reality to use against enemies and making wormholes to teleport on to, always resulting in a damaging entry.
• Spectacular Spinning: Legionnaire's Whirling Blade and Swiftblade's Blade Frenzy.
• Status Effects: This game has a lot of possible status effects, so naturally a few of them match up. Slither's skills cause poison, Pyromancer's Fervor causes burning, a number of heroes have ways of silencing, Blood Hunter's Blood Craze is essentially berserk, Glacius's Ice Imprisonment freezes, Maliken's Possession fears, and there are quite a few slows and stuns in this game.
  • Decovery is the theme built around Lord Salforis's skills. He can briefly reduce all healing applied by half, steal passive HP regeneration around him, and make a target completely unaffected by any source of health.
• Stone Wall: For a hulking living tree, Keeper of the Forest's damage output in a teamfight is paltry. Despite this flaw, he has incredible survivability due to double-buffing himself with Armor and HP Regen plus Stealth while close to trees, can demolish towers with his army of treants, and disable the entire enemy team by rooting them down with his ultimate.
• Stripperiffic: Some like Succubus but especially Ophelia I mean CMON!!! What the hell does Jeraziah say when he sees his sister like this.◊
  • Empath's Alt Avatar Lust gradually loses clothes as she levels up, fittingly.
• Super Mode: A staple of many carries.
  • Maliken's Possession turns him into a hulking demon with a ranged splash attack. When he turns into one, enemies around him literally cower and panic.
  • Hammerstorm can summon up his Brute Strength and more than his damage.
  • War Beast undergoes a Metamorphosis making him really goddamn fast.
  • Madman can go Berserk and totally flip out on an unfortunate victim. With Staff of the Master, if he gets killed, he'll die 5 seconds later.
  • Berzerker can unleash Carnage, making him hit like a truck, with the endurance of one. He takes more damage during it, though.
  • Salomon can turn into an Avatar of Revenge, gaining a second health bar and an all new set of abilities.
• Super-Speed: While War Beast is transformed via Metamorphosis, he gains max movespeed and can't be slowed at all.
  • Blitz is emphasized on speed. In fact, he can go beyond the normal movespeed limit.
• Summon Magic: The item Puzzlebox, plus a lot of hero skills, ranging from Forsaken Archer's Call of the Damned, Hellbringer's Summon Malphas, War Beast's Summon Hellhounds, and Wildsoul's Summon Booboo.
• Super-Strength: As in "super lots-of-Strength-points". Devourer will add any enemy heroes that dies within him to his bulk, gaining a point of Strength each time. Late game he can easily reach over 200 Strength, which is basically saying "HAHAHA now I kill you good". Exaggerated if you're playing Mid Wars.
  • In a similar vein, it's not uncommon to see a Strength build Shadowblade with over 4k HP.
  • Hammerstorm can pump up his strength to absurd levels temporarily with his ultimate, Brute Strength, where his strikes deals absurd damage. Naturally, because he's the port of Sven the Rogue Knight.
• Taunt Button: Taunt an enemy right before killing them gives you a Smackdown, plus a humiliating animation over their dead body if applicable. Don't get killed by the guy you taunted, though.
• Teleport Spam: Accompanied by sword slashes when Swiftblade triggers his Swift Slashes.
• Temporary Online Content: Notably, the Samuel L. Jackson announcer pack had a very short sales window. Players had only about a week to buy it before being permanently delisted from the store.
• The Chosen One: Jeraziah.
  "King Jeraziah, the hope of humanity and one of the two leaders of the Legion, is not just a mighty warrior but also the chosen of Sol himself."
• The "The" Title Confusion: The game is wishy-washy on whether some of the heroes have a "The" in front of their names. Even the devs occasionally forget if the hero's proper name is "The Chipper" or "Chipper", and he's not the only example.
• This Is a Drill: Lodestone's weapon of choice.
• Throw a Barrel at It: Engineer's The Keg.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Maliken's Sword Throw.
  • Closely related to (and technically inspired by) Bubbles' Shell Surf, in which said back-implement gets flung out.
• Time Stands Still: Chronos can freeze time within his Chronofield for everyone captured by it - except for himself.
  • With a Staff of the Master in his inventory, Chronos' teammates can move and act within the Chronofield, albeit very slowly.
• Too Dumb to Live: To keep this short, it's happened.
• Took a Level in Badass: Any hero that gets a major buff comes with a level-up in badassery, but in particular, Salomon. He was originally an odd supporty-tank who didn't bring a whole lot besides being hard to kill and a ultimate with a large but difficult damage potential. When Patch 3.2 rolled out, he was completely remade into a hard carry who uses extra gold gain to reach his peak faster and an ultimate that transforms him into an Avatar of Revenge, giving him a second lifebar and new skills that obliterates an enemy with little effort. His new lore reflected on this change: he trained himself inside his lamp so that he can get his revenge for being wrongfully imprisoned and to save his old companion.
• Unstable Equilibrium: Having a better early game often means you'll have a better late game.
  • This is called 'snowballing' and it is only true on team level. Individual heroes that perform well during the early game are useless 30 minutes later and vice versa. However, if there is just one bad player on your team who keeps dying, the game is lost no matter how good the rest of your team is.
• Use Your Head: Lodestone's Headsmash.
• Valkyries: There is one amongst the Legion's roster.
• Variable-Length Chain: Torturer.
  • Subverted with Berzerker and Prisoner. They both have skills involving chains, but they both break if the enemy gets too far from you.
• Visible Invisibility: To the invisible hero's team, or when someone is carrying a Bound Eye.
• When Trees Attack: Deadwood and Keeper of the Forest, arguably more so with the former.
  • Now quite literally with Keeper of the Forest, as he has gained the ability to bring trees to life and send them to attack his enemies.
• Wrench Wench: The game includes an engineer class (which allows you to build weapons) which includes female characters such as Engineer Rosie as well as Soaker Rosie.
• You Fool!: When all heroes fight against each other on one spot, using the wrong skills at the wrong time will have you being called an idiot in-universe.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Quoted by Soul Reaper when he casts Demonic Execution.
• You Shall Not Pass!: Pyromancer, if you click on him many times without giving a single command, will declare this.
  • Followed up by a rather sheepish "... I Always Wanted to Say That."
  • In a more literal context, Pharaoh's Wall of Mummies and Behemoth's Fissure. Also Empath's Illusory Veil.

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