Create A Hero Balence

[Kadan Joelavich]

One of the things I love about 4.0 is the return of Create a Hero (CaH). However, the current CaH are underpowered to the point where they are often not worth their cost. They are really only suited to basic troop support or minor Hero disruption/assassination.
I think that this needs to change so that CaH can again be made to fill different roles, specifically I would like to see CaH capable of again holding a forward warrior role.

I agree that CaH should not be as strong as normal Heroes, but could attributes increase hero stats exponentially rather than linearly? Instead of 20 damage per point of strength (or whatever it is), have it increase more in higher levels (so if a hero deals 300 damage with 10 strength, they might deal 1000 damage with 20, instead of 600 damage with 20 strength). This would cause people to have to think carefully about their attribute choices and build heroes with more clearly defined strengths and weaknesses.

Also, each Cah class should have it’s own passive combat ability like “Archer Specialization,” or “Poison Attack.”
These are my suggestions:
MotW: Strong Blows–a 4 tier power that gives slight splash damage (1-2 units hit/2-3 units hit/3-4 units hit/4-5 units hit), with the final level also giving meta-impact splash.

Archer: Keep specialization but buff it. Currently a hero with 18 strength and all 4 levels takes ~10 shots to kill a troll.

Dwarf: Toughness–make it a 4 tier power, final level increasing health by as much as 100%?

Dark Man: Armor of Spite–4 tier power that adds 12/25/37/50% reflect damage and maybe a slight armor boost?

Orc: Ferocity–4 tier power that increases attack speed, or keep poison.

MotE: Battle Glee–4 tier power that gives 5/10/15/20% life-steal on attacks, or keep poison.

Olog: Doesn’t necessarily need a 4 tier power b/c they already have splash, but maybe a lvl 10 passive power that gives large meta-impact splash. Alternatively, 4 tier power that gives a damage boost vs structures.

I would also love to see a "Taunt" power that makes enemies attack the hero (maybe for the dwarf of the troll), and a another dwarf power that allows giving a bonus to units in addition to heroes (dwarf forged blade).

What do you think? What other ideas do you have about Create a Hero?