Preface: Because I still think Refractive Armor on Phantom giving invis and armor is a bad combination of abilities that forces both abilities to be meh or bad to prevent imbalance. It requires separating the two to allow Phantom’s ability any sort of chance at being more than cheesy. As such, this merc is sort of the byproduct of separating the two abilities and leaving Phantom with only invis.
Anyways, on to merc, backstory and appearance (excluding gender) not included because numbers come easier than stories.
Class: Assault
Primary Ability (Crystallize): Diamond’s armor forms a protective layer of an organic polymer, reducing all bullet damage that she receives by 35%, and all explosive damage by 50% for 7 seconds, but reduces her movement speed by 20 and cannot jump during the duration. 40 second cooldown after deactivation. (47 second cycle)
HP: 150
Sprint speed: 370
Primary Weapons: K-121, Crotzini, Timik
Secondary: DE.50, Simeon, Smjuth&Whetsman
Melee: Combat Knife, Stiletto, Cricket Bat
Playstyle: Rather than rely on a straight offensive ability to absorb aggro, Diamond would create a threat by being the toughest person on the field. When she activates her ability at full health, she has an effective health pool of 230 against bullets (30 more than rhino), and an effective healthpool of 300 against explosives. On top of an aura station, or with a pocket medic, she can be incredibly difficult to kill while her ability is up. However, she loses a lot of mobility, and she is still vulnerable to melee and molotovs as normal, during the ability. Furthermore, this ability is best used preemptively, as it does not add to her existing health pool, and instead enhances her current health pool. Using this ability at 10 health would only increase her effective health pool by 5-6, while using it at 150 would increase it by 80. When not using her ability, she’s slightly slower than Fragger with a comparable health pool.
Reasoning: It’d be cool to have another Assault Class that is female, Nader being the only other one, but utility Assaults are underrepresented. The closest to utility on Assault right now would be the upcoming Thunder, but his utility is still very offensive in nature. Rhino is the closest we have to a tank merc right now, which is essentially a utility role, but he does it purely by just being a beefcake. And an ability that adds a flat health pool is basically an ability that becomes a pseudo-pocket medic, which is hard to balance and ultimately is just annoying to deal with.
So a merc that functions solely to tank by just being able to absorb more bullets was the theme, but then comes the dilemma of how to accomplish it. Adding damage reduction to make that bonus to health is more advantageous and a better choice than adding flat health because:
-
It’s not a pseudo heal, which is aggravating to fight against. Compare the two situations, an ability that adds a flat 80 health pool as armor, and the current ability which would make the effective health pool increase by 80. If you deal 80 damage to the first ability before it ends, the health pool is untouched and still at 150. If you do 80 damage to the second ability before it ends, the health pool is at 98 because of the damage reduction. Attacking Diamond during the first ability is prohibitive, since it’s attacking a fake health pool, while attacking during the second ability is still rewarding, just at a lower scale. Furthermore, the second ability is more powerful for the user if done in the right scenario, like with an actual pocket medic, so it ultimately has a higher potential reward from it’s use that the first ability, so long as you use the ability correctly.
-
It allows the ability to be gated solely by time, rather than damage received, so it creates situations where using it smart is more rewarding than using it reactive or whenever it’s up. If you’re suddenly under fire and take 80 damage, using the first ability (flat armor), would just add 80 health and basically function like a get out of jail free card. If you had the second ability, you would have a health pool of 70 increased to 107-108, which is an increase of 37-38 health. Furthermore, it allows counter play by allowing the opponent to ambush Diamond before she uses the ability, reducing it’s overall effectiveness if she uses it. However, good use of the ability could allow Diamond to tank through an entire push of an enemy team, or spearhead and survive a push herself, so long as she starts the fight on her terms.
Essentially, damage reduction rewards smart play from the user, and rewards smart play from opponents. Good use results in greater returns on the ability, and good counter play results in diminished, or no returns, on the ability.
Weapon choice is strong, with an emphasis on hard hitting automatics to compliment her tank play style. Secondaries are standard hard hitting pistols. Melee could replace the stiletto with kukri, but melee isn’t her emphasis so it’s kinda redundant. Slow people tend to not get in range to smack people to begin with.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this type of merc has been suggested before (it’s quite simple), but I was bored and decided to give it a whirl.