[MERC] Swift

(doxjq) #1

In a nutshell, a small and agile (hence the name Swift) secondary slayer, who fills a similar role to Stoker with a slightly different play style. With low health with strong slaying capabilities, she would best be used in second line fire behind the heavy assault mercs, or in flanking positions making the most of her ability and speed.

Stats:
Gender: Female
Nationality: Swiss
Class: Assault / Flanking
Health: 90
Speed: 450

Cost:
50,000

Abilities:

  1. Hornets Nest Grenade

A low charge explosive containing 60 x .45 caliber pellets that upon impact with enemies deals 6hp per connecting pellet. Since hornets nest grenades typically cover a 360 degree radius, it would be virtually impossible to kill even the unluckiest lowest health mercs with one grenade. It is designed more for crowd control, and dealing a little bit of damage for slaying support. Best used in CQC to weaken enemies inside rooms or choke points.

Cool down: 22 seconds

Weapons:
M4
Timik
Dreiss

S&W
Selbstadt
Simeon

(Naonna) #2

So about a thunder-range nade, but with less damage than Fletcher’s sticky bombs: seems ok, given his weaponry. - I’m curious if this role is already filled better by Stoker, given that he denies an area for an extended amount of time.

(doxjq) #3

The idea was similar to Stoker, except the grenade is less powerful and the merc itself is smaller and faster, comparable to Kira vs Arty - same guns, similar abilities, similar roles, but totally different play styles. In theory it should be impossible to kill anyone with it if they are full health with the grenade, hence the lesser cool down. If anything it works more like a grenade variant of Aimees snitch, where people will still live but be more vulnerable.

It was more a blend of Kira and Stoker combined, without the fire support. A small, fast female with full automatic fire power. Upside = movement and slaying support, downside = incredibly squishy. It’s quite surprising how different players suit smaller faster mercs more so than heavy assault mercs and visa versa. I think it would be interesting to see. In order to use her ability properly you need to be in CQC but since she is so squishy, it would be a delicate balance. Hence giving her the full automatic guns, just to help balance the fights up close.

I think it could work.

(Naonna) #4

I dunno. Give this to thunder as a second nade, then. Im out of ideas. I’m unsure if it’s unique enough to be its own merc.

(doxjq) #5

That’s the whole point of the merc though, not to be unique but a variant. 90% of the idea is to add the squishy fast merc designed to be up front as all the current front runners are all slow tanks. It’s not so much about the ability, so giving it to another huge assault merc defeats the purpose haha.

We don’t have a small up close and personal female assault class or any class that is designed specifically for flanking. Aimee kinda is, but most people use her and the Grandeur wrong and/or just stick to the sniper rifles with her. Kira is about as close as it comes, but her ability isn’t so good up close and she only has burst fire rifles.

We need some up close and personal fast female mercs with full auto rifles imo. Speed and agility is a good alternative to slow and tanky. It wouldn’t damper the way any merc already plays, it would just add more variety to how you can play the game.

Appreciate the feed back though. Thunder sure will be interesting to play after his next lot of changes.

(Dysfnal) #6

I had a merc idea, with the exact same name. But he would have had a speed boost ability

(Jostabeere) #7

Heh. Finally a good merc idea.

(doxjq) #8

Cheers @Jostabeere, although thinking about it I’m kind of convinced it might be a better balanced merc if the health was slightly higher (maybe 100hp?) given the aggressive playstyle she would require.

(OdaNobunaga) #9

Very creative idea! One of the best I have seen on the forums. It’s balanced, simple, and a clean-looking class. However, as a support class, I don’t think she should have such strong weapons like the M4 and Timik, but rather SMG’s.

+1!

(doxjq) #10

I was actually considering taking out the Stark and replacing it with perhaps the Hochfir or something fully automatic to give her a bit of variety.

The only reason I gave her the strong weapons like the M4 and Timik were simply to create a fast CQC female with full automatic rifles as there isn’t one in the game yet.

I think she might be too squishy if she only had access to SMG’s but I could be wrong, so it’s a nice suggestion!

I was also thinking that if I gave her burst fire rifles only people would say she is too similar to Kira, and if I gave her SMG’s only they’d probably say she’s a weaker less efficient version of Nader.

Open to all suggestions though, but I have a funny feeling the dev’s never really check out these forums any way which is why I haven’t bothered posting up my other merc ideas yet haha.

(HunterAssassin5) #11

so the hornet nade is basically…a 360 degree shotgun?

(doxjq) #12

60 pellets that cover a 360 degree radius. I think you missed that detail. That’s only 15 pellets per quarter, so chances are if it went off a couple of metres away from you, you’d probably only be hit with 4-5 pellets max. Considering they only do 6hp each, that isn’t much. Unless you can some how be on all sides of the grenade at once, which isn’t possible.

(HunterAssassin5) #13

wait do the pellets spray outwards in a sphere or in a circle?

also why pick this over, say, nader or fragger for damage, or stoker or thunder for area denial?

(doxjq) #14

In a sphere usually, so if the nade was in the air and exploded the pellets shooting out the top would do nothing, and the ones coming out the bottom if it was on the ground wouldn’t do damage to any one either.

Why pick her? As explained in an earlier post she’s just a variant of what already exists in a nutshell. There are plenty of people who prefer speed and agility to being a slow tank with loads of hp, so that’s all it is. We don’t have any small fast assault classes - Kira is about as close as it comes to that, but even then she only has burst fire rifles. It’s almost like saying why pick Kira over Arty (same guns, both supply ammo, both have some form of airstrike) if you’re comparing Swift to Fragger, it’s just preference.

(AConfusedAlpaca) #15

This is genuinely a good idea for a merc. I like the whole idea have having a ‘Glass Cannon’ front line that can actually feel useful.

(HunterAssassin5) #16

in that case, it’s good, merc-wise. i still dont know about the ability, though. maybe make it so the nade explodes on impact with anything, the damage is probably low enough it wont be too powerful

(Brycko) #17

OMG SWISS #REPRESENT

I really like the idea. The ability is good, although 6hp per pellet seems a lot. I guess it depends on the rpm. Would this thing last only a couple seconds or would it have a long suppressive duration like Stoker’s Molotov?

As for the weapons, I’d suggest the SMG-9, the Stark (or BR, since alot of mercs already have the Stark) the Blishok and maybe the Dreiss… it’s difficult to judge. The Dreiss can sometimes be used close range like a shotgun, so maybe that would work… besides, another fast Merc with the hochfir is just too much of a pseudo Proxy. Weapons like the M4 and the Timik would be too OP on a fast Merc like Swift .

I also think some sort of automatic pistol (not a machine pistol) would be good as a secondary, especially in the presence of a burst rifle or slow firing SMG. Think like an automatic m9, firing slightly slower than a mp-400.

Finally, what makes this class a recon class and not a fire support class? We’ve had this discussion about how Phantom doesn’t have a spotting ability like the other recon classes, so why would Swift be recon? Seems like she would be more of a fire support class…

(doxjq) #18

I’m not sure why I put recon tbh, I guess she’s more assault if anything. Doesn’t fire support have to provide ammo as well? Sorry if I’m wrong, I’m not too familiar with what defines each class.

Personally I think she’d be far too squishy if she didn’t have the full fire power, which is originally why I wanted her to have rifles only. I was on the fence about the hochfir, but I still think she should have access to the full automatic rifles (the whole design was based around that really). Sure she might be fast, but she is also super squishy, so it kind of balances out. It’s hard to say though without actually playing said class I guess. The dreiss might be able to work but it’s in such a weird spot and so many people hate it I felt obliged to not put it in haha.

Also re: the grenade, it’s a single quick blast like any ordinary grenade. Some people refer to them as ball bearing grenades instead, so basically it explodes and the ball bearings fly out at all directions. They’re usually pretty harmless, used for riot / crowd control really.

Like that.

(Brycko) #19

UHHHHH… So its essentially a Fragger grenade with unlimited range but significantly lower damage…

After players realize that the grenade does virtually no damage, then how would the crowd control work? Maybe a blood splatter, maybe a bit of kickback/recoil/aimpunch, but otherwise I see few practical effects. The shock effect would be good, but once the players realize that the effect isn’t a) long-term and b) actually really dangerous, they won’t be afraid of it. They’ll just take it like another bullet. I guess the closest comparison is Thunder, but Thunder has much greater health (if lower speed), a big ass gun and a long lasting effect.

I can understand that its a ‘defense shaking’ ability, like Thunder’s (and now Phantom’s), but I’m kinda skeptical as to if it would be comparable to the other abilities.

When I originally thought of the hornets nest grenade, I was actually thinking more along the lines of the chaos mine from code geass (it gets like, 5 seconds screen time in the whole series). It jumps into the air and fires bullets a spread of bullets like a machine gun. Low damage, but terribly frightening. Its last like 5-10 seconds before running out of ammo. It fires a spread in a cone. I guess it’s more of a suppression/fire support thing than anything else.

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/codegeass/images/1/1d/Chaos_Grenade.png/revision/latest?cb=20091116000723

Just keep it in mind.

Also, about the Dreiss: I think people hate it because they think they are supposed to use it like rifle: Scoped in, from a distance (which is ironic, considering the Driess has ironsights). From personal experience, I think the Dreiss is far for effective being used at closer range with hip fire. That being said, I don’t use the Driess much.

(doxjq) #20

It doesn’t have infinite range, it fires projectiles, which like any projectile would suffer fall off damage.

That’s why I said in the OP it’s best used in CQC, where the spread is still tight and more than one pellet could hit someone. If you used it in an open area and threw it 5 or 10 metres away from someone, chances are you’re only going to hit them with one pellet, or none.