2 Merc Ideas


(23OO23) #1

Hello

I will keep this short and clean as possible. There’s a ton of other suggestions, many of them are good, so in the end it’s what devs choose shall remain. I will try to elaborate on some parts, alas hard to say without real testing what will be what, especially since I like fun and innovative tries on stuff.

For example I hate Fletcher as a whole, mostly because people use shotguns, and I hate them - they should have some knockback effect while midair to fight @#$@!# bunny jumping - but I digress, and other than that, I love how he is played, as you can be a very dynamic player with him, while almost all other mercs use mostly their weapons instead and are less… mobile.

So let us start with the first of the mercenaries.

Phantonina.

Joking.

:laughs at his own shitty joke:

But seriously - I love Phantom. And I would love to see more mercs like him. Which is why I also wish to suggest either a new class type, or give him some kind of spotting ability, even if it’s only for one enemy - because even though he is a recon, people hate him enough to not even consider him to go scouting .

So, let us assume no change to classes, this would be an assault merc. I would love another female, so I will add a female. But not a weaboo baka yaro asian, but… :throws a dart at the map: …Laponia, huh… ok, it’s a Canadian. Close enough.

Name? Who cares. Bathes-in-the-blood-of-her-enemies-and-bla-bla-bla. Seems good enough. No? Eh… Let’s call her Mina then. Lovely.

The stats are debatable, so I can just suggest them:
HP: 100 Speed: 450 (as it’s a female… I’m such a sexist pig…)

Her primary weapons in my opinion would be: Crotzni, SMG-9, Blishlock
And her secondary: Normal pistols. Because whatever. I would have preferred revolvers, but sadly I do not think they would fit here.

As for abilities:

1st one would be a knife. Yes, she’s a spy from TF2. Literally. A femspy. Believe me, I know. I am writing this. But instead of insta-gibbing, it would simply deal more damage from the rear, akin to backstabbing. While this idea seems like a cliche - meele in this game is not easy, it sucks pretty much - any kill with meele is a lucky achievement with only a dose of skill - jumping away and shooting someone slashing at you is rather easy. Not to mention going behind and shooting people who are engaged is easy too. Which is why I would like some meele oriented skill that actually does something - you have to get close, the main advantage of this is that you can wreck some kind of chaos while getting some lucky backstabs. Perfectly, this skill would for example induce some kind of bleeding, poison, whatever - to do even more. But at the end of the day, let us make it simple: either make this skill a passive that adds +50% damage to weapons when hitting someone from behind, or a special knife with electricity that recharges, with up to 2-3 possible slashes at the time.

2nd ability would somehow complement the first one, alas it’s more or less my favourite thing to do: be annoying. This skill is a 50% invisibility that occurs in short bursts over a set amount of time. Something like this: 0.5 second long phases with 0.5 seconds between them, so in total it would last no more than 5 seconds. It is actually quite some time if we consider that you can run into an enemy clusterfuck and start slashing around.

What, in ranked it would be op? So is a Phantom suddenly dropping into said clusterfuck, with EMP disabling this jesus tower - everyone jumps away, shoots phantom and proceeds to rekt yer team so it can whine at you for not doing anything in these 3 seconds they had an opportunity to shoot at enemies. :shrugs: Underpowered? I can see quite some moments where this would be annoying af. And so is a well thrown nade, so are many other things.

My vision for this mercenary is to have a fast moving character that can do what Phantom fails at: being an annoying distraction. Of course if we consider a meele Phantom. Phantom with a gun and some aim can still fuck people up.

My second mercenary suggestion is an engineer. With grandeur, because I like it. Quote me.

His name is Jack. Or Dan. Or whatever. He’s a country boi, who learned to shoot hunting rifles at his coc… chickens. :throws dart again: Hmm… Russia. What were the odds… . Alright then, his name is Ivan, and he hunts bears and wild tractors. End of the story.

He is an engineer because he is country. :looks at what he just wrote: Ok, I am an idiot. Sorry. But I see a country boy as someone who knows how to repair his own bike or whatever cattle he has.

His stats would be (again, debatable, it will always be up to testing if he is even considered):
HP: 120 Speed: 410

He’s a rather massive guy, with beard. Big beard. That likes to steal some food whenever he’s eating. Angry beard!

His weapons are: primarily grandeur, dreiss ar and let’s say BR-16 or some sniper rifle, alas the reason for BR is: no scopes.
Secondary: of course revolvers. Bah. A big magnum for a big guy!

His skill would be a ball, like a heartbeat sensor, that release a small electric discharge, dealing minor damage in a small aoe and also slowing down enemies. If possible, it should make some noise so Ivan can react, but not just mark someone - then he would be a recon, niet?

My vision for this merc is: big guy with a hunting rifle that knows how to fix a car for his girlfriend and also bring some fresh deer for the evening. …what? Not good enough?

Sorry for this to be so long, but my shitty sense of humour always gets better of me.

TL;DR
Sorry. There is no TL;DR. I also lied. This is not clean… .


(JJMAJR) #2

I’ll clean up the post for you.

“Mina”
[spoiler]Nationality - Canadian
Assault

100 HP
450 speed

Crotzni, SMG-9, Blishlock
Light Pistols
(What melee weapons?)

Ability 1 - Knife
[spoiler]Option 1: Passive ability that makes melee weapons deal +50% increased damage from behind.
Option 2: A melee ability that has 2-3 charges which deals increased damage.[/spoiler]
Ability 2 - Cloak
[spoiler]50% invisibility that occurs in short bursts over a set amount of time.
0.5 second long phases with 0.5 seconds between them.
In total it would last no more than 5 seconds.[/spoiler][/spoiler]

[spoiler]This character is not useful whatsoever, sorry. It relies too much on an enemy team being distracted by a strobe effect that doesn’t actually help the person hide from even the most unaware team. This character also dies really quickly.

What does this character have that Bushwhacker doesn’t? It lacks objective specialist, dies faster, and doesn’t have even a barely useful ability. The only thing going for it is speed, and Kira, even though she has less health and speed, can be considered a direct upgrade due to stronger TTK values and the ability to indirectly attack enemies.

My suggestions for this class: try making a stronger Nader in regards to the HP/speed/size balance. Like, 140 HP and 430 speed, with Phoenix’s body size. Make her a secondaries-only character, so that she is a bit subpar compared to Nader’s weapon quality.

Finally, if you want a role for her that arouses the “distraction” archetype, go for something like self-healing in a form like Sparks’ med packs, except having only one. She can’t snipe, nor can she actually heal her team, so she’s balanced.

Because there’s no way this concept would take off.[/spoiler]

“Ivan”
[spoiler]Nationality - Russian (because we already have 10 russians in this game)
Engineer

120 HP
410 speed

Grandeur, Dreiss AR, BR-16 or PDP
Magnums
(I’m guessing you’re going with “big sword for big guy too” or “propaganda of the deed knives and kukri”?)

Ability 1 - Tesla Ball
[spoiler]Better turret due to hitting multiple enemies and doing so instantly.[/spoiler]

Ability 2 - Objective Specialist[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Okay, so your previous idea was terrible. This idea is overpowered. Not only do you have a better Redeye (especially in regards to skill set) but there is also the problem where your ability is so many times better than Bushwhacker’s ability. It would be a bit funny if they made lore for a Bushwhacker update that says “he killed some dude and stole his tech in Russia and now Thunder wants to kill him” or something.

This character is also both heavily romanticized and the gameplay isn’t suitable for what this character represents. For example, look at the movement speed. A “big guy” can’t run that fast, due to the square-cube law.

Also, there is a character that follows a similar line of logic, a brawny engineer that has higher intelligence. Fletcher, the narcissist coming from Nigeria. Do you see those muscles?

Nerf his HP to 110, his speed to 400, and give him better weapons. That’s the first thing I’d do to this character so that he’s not a strictly better Redeye. The Dreiss and BR-16 could go to other engineer classes that don’t have such a powerful ability.

Secondly, give him proper sniper rifles. This would make him overspecialized in burst damage and due to his lack of spotting, he’s a strictly worse Vaseline without a proper defense and offense (already have this) ability. If you want, you can attach a passive that makes his scoped rifles use iron sights and/or his magnums use scopes. That would be pretty awesome to be honest.

Finally, I’d like to know how good the tesla ball would be. If it does less DPS than Bushwhacker’s turret, we would have a problem. Bushwhacker’s turret does abysmal DPS. Also, if it has less health than Bushwhacker’s turret, the likely scenario in a competitive scene is that it’s treated as a worse Proxy mine.

Also, you ever thought of making the sniper rifles deal increased damage to objectives? Just an idea that I thought would nicely circulate around in your head.[/spoiler]