Tempest's Innate

[Softmints]

I have mentioned on several occasions that I don't like Tempest having one of the best escape mechanisms in the game as his innate. My plan is to remove Arc Lightning, make Gale his ultimate, and give him a new innate instead.

Whirlwind is a misfit ability on Tempest at the moment. It's a nice ability; I rather like that it can be used to save allies or snatch fleeing enemies, and that it doubles up as a semi-escape. However, Tempest gains very little from displacing his enemies and bunching lots of units together. The offensive edge of Gale is also very risky for Tempest, as it uses his escape and close-range bolt is often impractical to land.

Let's run through a simple process of elimination:

What does Tempest not need?

• Another nuke
• Any disables
• Healing
• Mobility
• Inivsibility/illusions
• Survivability

What might Tempest find useful?

• More area damage (can't hurt)
• Attack rate/attack ability?
• An ability to help his allies?
• An ability which works well in melee (but still takes some aiming?)

So some possible abilities would be things like bonus attack rate to allies in an area, or bonus attack rate upon spending mana (as a passive component of Arc Lightning?). Those are a bit boring though; I might have to come up with some novel aiming. Lowering enemy resistance is done by Judi and Ty so I'll leave that to them.

I'd also considered an ability which knockbacks 25 distance (it's just an interrupt, but Mallaton can buff it up a bit). Could be useful to follow up an offensive Gale.

What would people like to see on Tempest?

[Dracula]

I'd be inclined to agree that Whirlwind is a bit situational on Tempest at the moment and rarely helps line up his other abilities. What might be interesting to see would be an electrified whirlwind that (instead of picking people up) traces a strand of lightning along the ground (the strand expires when the whirlwind returns to Tempest), damaging enemies that touch it up to one time (perhaps additional damage if the whirlwind itself connects) and possibly 25 knockback (if you still want that). Granted, the clockwise/counterclockwise of the whirlwind would actually be much more relevant now and should probably be able to changed like Assassin's Fumble/Maw's Expel/etc instead of just random, but it seemed like an interesting thought. Perhaps slightly too easy to aim, though.

As for his new innate, you seem to like the attack speed possibilities a lot, so I suppose it could be something like this:

Eye of the Storm:
Channeling the powers of nature into powerful magic takes extreme concentration. Losing more than X% of his maximum HP from any single instance of damage causes him to lose his calm for a brief instant, redirecting the power into himself and nearby allied heroes, energizing their bodies and increasing their attack speed.

It's something that's great in teamfights/when Tempest commits, but not so strong when he's just simply laning, which is important as he's already an extremely strong laner and doesn't really need more advantage in that regard.

[Softmints]

Whirlwind's direction isn't random, it's chosen the same way Arc Arrow is (by facing prior to cast).

As I say, I don't think he needs another nuke. Whirlwind is (counter-intuitively) a "good fit" in the sense that it doesn't make his other kit any more useful. It also gives him a semi-escape ability and some kind of helping-the-team presence (which more heroes need).

Eye of the Storm sounds good, but maybe a little too passive for me. Takes 0 thinking on Tempest's part. I agree he doesn't need anything that'd improve his lane.

[Walter]

Could give him an ability that allows him to blow gusts of wind that change the trajectory of malnimbus and whirlwind, maybe even other units and other projectile-based abilities.