Engineer Merc of Ability Disabling

(I-Fell-Tower) #1

Name: Barry

Role: Engineer

Primary Ability; Multi-tool: Barry carries around a yellow, industrial-looking, cannon-looking device that benefits Barry’s team’s automated defenses. The device has a maximum of 3 charges and one missing charge is regenerated every 30 seconds. When a charge is used on an automated defense or such the following will happen with the following ADs and such.
Ammo Pack - Charged ammo packs cannot be picked up by the enemy team.
Healing Station - Charged healing stations regenerate one health (in the case of the station being damaged) per second for 10 seconds after being charged.
Turret - The same thing as with the healing station.
Sticky - Charged stickies explode 0.5 seconds after an enemy has entered their individual explosion area.
Ammo Station - The same thing as with the healing station.
Proximity Mine - Charged mines generate little to no sound.
Healing Pack - The same thing as with the ammo packs.
Heartbeat Censor - Charged censors have a detection area increase of 25%.

Secondary ability; Drain Beam: Barry can load up this shot in 3 seconds to release a beam that drains all the ability power of the enemy merc unfortunate enough to be standing in the front of the beam has.

HP: 80

Speed: 450

Arsenal: Machine pistols, maybe a new one?

About Barry: Looks extremely poor and thin. Has a working suit on. Thinks that the world hasn’t still seen the full capabilities yet.

Uses: Barry’s great for upgrading your defense. His ability-draining powers can also hold off the attackers during critical moments. When attacking he can use hit-and-run tactics and drain enemies’ defensive powers.

Weaknesses: Short range, weak weapons, highly vulnerable.

(PleasantWheat) #2

Cool idea but seems a little too trivial to be of any actual use. No deployables in this game last very long so it kind of makes his ability moot. Secondary ability seems like it has potential, maybe scrap the first one and work on the second?

(I-Fell-Tower) #3

I could rework the merc a little bit…
But not for now.
It’s getting late in here.

(I-Fell-Tower) #4

Reworked the merc a little bit…

Name: Barry

Role: Engineer

Primary Ability; Back-up Tool: Barry carries around an industrial, yellow, cannon-looking device that can target up to 3 friendly deployables at a time. The types of these targetable deployables are:

  1. Ammo Pack
  2. Healing Station
  3. Turret
  4. Sticky
  5. Ammo Station
  6. Proximity Mine
  7. Healing Pack
  8. Heartbeat Censor
    Targeted deployables return 50% cool-down progress to their deployer once they get picked up (like with the packs) or when they get destroyed (like with the stations, turrets and so on). If the device doesn’t have 3 targeting charges at a moment it will generate one in 30 seconds.

Secondary ability; Drain Shock: Barry uses his machine to generate a low-range electrical shot in 3 seconds. During these seconds Barry moves in a snail’s pace and when the shock activates it will drain 75% cool-down progress from any enemies unfortunate enough to be standing in front of Barry. This ability has a 30-second cool-down.

Passive ability; Objective Specialist: Anyone who has even a little idea on what Dirty Bomb is knows this ability. Barry does objectives faster than non-Engineer mercs.

HP: 80

Speed: 450

Arsenal: Machine pistols, maybe a new one?

About Barry: Looks extremely poor and thin. Has a working suit on. Thinks that the world hasn’t still seen his full capabilities yet.

Uses: Barry keeps your team using their abilities in the most critical of situations. He has a lot of defensive potential but as a hit-and-run attacker who drains enemies’ defensive powers he’s also a good choice.

Weaknesses: Short range, weak weapons, highly vulnerable.

(Naonna) #5

Cool down-focused abilities which negate the usefulness of a character such as sparks/aura/phantom seems fun, it would be rather painful to play against.

The main ability, removing cool down from teammates would result in a few issues. Destroying an aura station is very rewarding for a team, normally. If this merc’s ability is triggered though, Aura can just plunk down a new one instantly. Sure this happens already with a little bit of time, but making it even harder to kill deployables means some characters are EXTREMELY buffed. - Think of the endless stream of stickies from 2 Fletchers in a pub.

A near-constant existence of a heartbeat sensor from a single Vassili wold be annoying as well. Subtracting cool down from teammates also would be even scarier when there are multiples of the ‘Barry’ on a single team.

(I-Fell-Tower) #6

[quote=“Naonna;153763”]Cool down-focused abilities which negate the usefulness of a character such as sparks/aura/phantom seems fun, it would be rather painful to play against.

The main ability, removing cool down from teammates would result in a few issues. Destroying an aura station is very rewarding for a team, normally. If this merc’s ability is triggered though, Aura can just plunk down a new one instantly. Sure this happens already with a little bit of time, but making it even harder to kill deployables means some characters are EXTREMELY buffed. - Think of the endless stream of stickies from 2 Fletchers in a pub.

A near-constant existence of a heartbeat sensor from a single Vassili wold be annoying as well. Subtracting cool down from teammates also would be even scarier when there are multiples of the ‘Barry’ on a single team.[/quote]

Thanks (again) for the feedback!
Here are some changes I came up with when thinking on how to rebalance Barry:

Primary Ability Changes
Would restore 20% cooldown progress to the targeted deployable’s owner instead of 50%.
Cooldown for regenerating a new charge increased to 1min15s from 30s.

Merc Stat Changes
Barry’s speed could be reduced to 440.

Why the changes were made
Yeah, the 50% cooldown progress reward could be too high. The ability’s own cooldown increase was made to make the ability less spammy and the speed reduce made playing as the merc more risky.

(Naonna) #7

pssst… ammo packs already return 20 percent of a cooldown on a direct hit.

(HunterAssassin5) #8

engineers typically have only one actual ability and then the obj spec passive ability anyways. scrap the first ability.

as for the second ability, the quickest way to describe it to someone who’ll understand me is the emp blast from ghost recon phantoms. in an ability-focused game such as dirty bomb or grp, its very devastating to lose the ability to use your…well…ability XD

(im so funny, i make puns, laugh at me)

also, i’d say to make it somewhat similar to phoenix’s heal, except you can’t sprint, just move at the usual walking speed. if you slowed him down, chances are the enemies have either killed the guy or moved outside the radius when the ability activates.

also make it a directed blast instead of an area blast? its a suggestion that i dont think will make it better or worse, but will make things different.

(PoisonBoost) #9

drain beam charges to fast for what it does.

(I-Fell-Tower) #10

Changes (28th of February 2016)

  1. Judging by the feedback I thought that Barry’s Primary ability should be removed and replaced by the secondary ability.

  2. Secondary Ability Changes:

  • Renamed “Drain Rifle”.
  • Now Barry deploys an assault rifle (looks would look still similiar to the previous Back-up Tool) that fires beam bolts which drain enemies ability cooldown progress.
  • As stated, is now the primary ability.
  1. New Secondary Ability named “Mode Switch”
  • Barry switches the firing mode of his Drain Rifle between semi-automatic, fully automatic and burst-fire.
  • Semi-automatic mode is best used at range. The fire rate is similiar to Dreiss and at close range the ability progress drainage is 12%.
  • Fully automatic mode lets Barry fire as fast as with the Timik. The range isn’t the best but the Draining per second is higher close up than with the semi-automatic mode.
  • The burst-fire mode is the most accurate and low-recoil mode but it has a pretty low Draining per second.
(Naonna) #11

changing the properties of a gun mid-game would make it the single most useful ‘gun’ of dirty bomb: Even sparks only has a single type of attack with her ability.
Consider that post-alpha, Abilities are NOT primary weapons. your merc would also need a true primary and secondary, since the ability rifle will be bound to E or W by default. - Decide weaponry?

(HunterAssassin5) #12

@Naonna you bound one of your abilities to W?

Also, personally I liked it when it was aoe rather than projectile/fired from a gun. Limits its range so it’s not another sporks and makes it easier for bad aim guys like me to actually do something with it.

(Naonna) #13

derp. Q or E. i can type words ‘-’ … i swear.

(I-Fell-Tower) #14

@Naonna Remember, the gun could ONLY reduce enemy cooldown progress. It would deal absolutely zero damage.

@TheRyderShotgun Maybe one of the firing modes could be replaced by an AoE blast. It would have a low RPM but it would reduce the cool-down progress nicely lot.

Weapon Announcing

Barry’s primary weapon would be (by default) the Tolen MP. He could also carry the MP 400 and the Empire.
For secondaries his default would be the .40 but the Gaulden and the M9 are also available for him.
His default melee is the Stiletto and he can use the Combat Knife and the Bat too.