Merc: Venom

(Dr_Plantboss) #1

Name:
•Venom
Nationality:
•French
Gender:
•Female

Venom was a secret agent that got discharged for shooting a superior officer with a tranquilizer dart. Now she’s upgraded to poison.
Venom gets a long range dart pistol that causes enemies to slowly lose health, and prevents health regeneration.

Stats:

  • Health: 80
  • Speed: 470
  • Price: 50,000
  • Class: Unknown

Primaries:

  • Empire-9 i[/i]
  • TØlen MP
  • MP400

Secondaries

  • Selbstadt .40 i[/i]
  • M9
  • Caulden

Melees:

  • Kukri i[/i]
  • Beckhill Combat Knife
  • Stilnotto Stiletto

Abilities:
Dart Pistol
Shoots a 30 damage dart that inflicts a poison debuff that removes 6% of target’s max HP per second, and wears off after 8 seconds. Hitting a target with multiple darts refreshes duration and stacks damage up to 10% Targets hit with the dart have 33% reduced healing from all sources. Cannot headshot.

Shots: 3 Cooldown: 10 seconds/shot

Morphine Injector
Heal yourself for 60% of your max health over 3 seconds. Extra health can carry over as up to a 25% HP bonus. Lowers mobility while in use.

Cooldown: 25 seconds

New Exclusive Augment:
Poison Blood:
Poisoned targets take 10% more damage from all sources.

(BushWanker) #2

I like this one a lot, just give her SMG’s and a third melee option.

(doxjq) #3

Sounds pretty similar to an idea I posted up last year (but I forget the name of mine) which was pretty much the same thing with similar damages except instead of a dart it was just a grenade that could hit the ground and explode a cloud of poison that dealt a certain amount of damage to people if they hit it (but it couldn’t kill them)

I think it sounds good.

(Dr_Plantboss) #4

The reason I gave her machine pistols and not SMGs is because it fits the playstyle I envisioned for her. Said playstyle is as such:

Dart someone, wait a couple seconds, and then finish them off with your machine pistol to claim a kill. Or just weaken them with the dart.

(JJMAJR) #5

Extremely underpowered. Countered by medics, and in most situations where this could pull any weight you’re better off using Sparks due to her ability to deal burst damage, and have more than 3 shots.

And Sparks? She’s not a combat class.

This character would be a lot better if she can shut down medics or at least force friendlies to remove the dart from a victim before they heal. She also lacks so much survivavbility.

(raspberryPike) #6

Keep going with this idea; I like the concept, but push forward with perfecting this. The problem is that, for an assault merc, she needs at bare minimum 90 hp or some way to heal, which wouldn’t make her an assault merc. Also a bit lacking on the abilities department, maybe find a new way to shake up the gameplay with an extra ability to mess with.
Good start, keep going!

(Naonna) #7

Making this an assault hero seems wise. I have a history of strongly disliking poison, however. Because it lingers, it encourages a hit-and-run strategy. Furthermore, even if a character kills the poison-dealer, without a medic, they too will almost inevitably die. In public games, I could see this being hated as much as phantom was on release.

Careful balancing could fix this. Without testing, we have no way of knowing the general consensus on this sort of ability.

(Dr_Plantboss) #8

@JJMAJR @raspberryPike @Naonna
Thread revamp!

Check out the new stats of the merc and her abilities!

(Naonna) #9

Because I’m bad at numbers, We’d have to see if having secondaries as primaries makes her too weak to be picked over someone like Fragger. I point out design flaws - I’m not a mathematician.

(JJMAJR) #10

Why not just make the dart debilitate enemies by default?

(Dr_Plantboss) #11

It recuduces healing and does damage of it’s own, increasing it’s own damage by 10% and then making this person that’s hard to heal easier to kill is just asking for rage. This makes it so that it takes a little bit of sacrifice, as the loadouts with that augment would probably not have as good of weapons.

(GatoCommodore) #12

venom
sacrifice

what is this?
ancient aztec ritual?

(Dr_Plantboss) #13

Request acknowledged!

Added second ability “Morphine Injector”

(SnakekillerX) #14

[quote=“Dr_Plantboss;d-33749”]Name:
•Venom
Nationality:
•French
Gender:
•Female

Venom was a secret agent that got discharged for shooting a superior officer with a tranquilizer dart. Now she’s upgraded to poison.
Venom gets a long range dart pistol that causes enemies to slowly lose health, and prevents health regeneration.

Stats:

  • Health: 80
  • Speed: 470
  • Price: 30,000
  • Class: Assault

Primaries:

  • Empire-9 i[/i]
  • TØlen MP
  • MP400

Secondaries

  • Selbstadt .40 i[/i]
  • M9
  • Caulden

Melees:

  • Kukri i[/i]
  • Katana
  • Cricket Bat

Abilities:
Dart Pistol
Shoots a 30 damage dart that inflicts a poison debuff that has -4 health per second, and wears off after 8 seconds. Targets hit with the dart have 50% reduced healing from all sources. Cannot headshot.

Shots: 3 Cooldown: 10 seconds/shot

Morphine Injector
Inject morphine into yourself to heal for 65 HP, or use it on full health to give yourself a 20 HP bonus.

Cooldown: 22 seconds

New Exclusive Augment:
Poison Blood:
Poisoned targets take 10% more damage from all sources.

[/quote]

I like the idea of the character, but feel like they encompass too many good traits to be balanced… at least in pub matches.

Pros:

  • Fast
  • Has powerful melee weapons
  • Ability can damage the enemy (30 instant damage and 32 damage over 8 seconds)
  • Ability can de-buff the enemy (reduced healing from all sources AND increased damage from all sources)
  • Can instantly self heal 80% of max hp
  • Can buff own hp beyond maximum by 25%
  • 3 Dart Charges
  • Multiple abilities
  • Many different play styles

Cons:

  • Squishy (when not self buffed)
  • Weak Primary Weapons (low killing potential with primary weapon)
  • Darts are projectile based? (not hit scan) making it harder to track and hit enemies
  • Darts have drop off, don’t go too far?

Firstly, I wouldn’t play this as an Assault character as they don’t have the killing potential to down targets quickly.

Since this is sort of its own breed of merc though, I think something like “Specialist” would be fitting.

They specialize in de-buffing the enemy and buffing themselves.
I actually really like the merc idea and would love to see some sort of concept art if you have something in mind for her.

Here are some questions on your abilities, some might be obvious, while others not so much.
Regardless, I’m wondering what you had in mind.

Dart Gun:

  1. What type of weapon is the Dart Gun? (Hit Scan? Projectile?)

If Projectile, does the Dart suffer from bullet drop, or does it travel straight until it hits something?

If Projectile, what kind of speed are you thinking of having the Darts travel at?

  1. Does the poison on the Darts ability stack if hit multiple times within the 8 second window?

  2. How quickly could you shoot all 3 Darts in quick succession? How many Darts can the gun hold, is there a reload function/animation for it?

Morphine Injector:

  1. How long does this ability take to prepare and use? (length of animations)

  2. Can you use the ability while airborne or moving?

Concerns/Suggestions:

Katana/Cricket Bat

Two strongest melee weapons + Speed + high self healing potential = SCARY.
I’d recommend removing these two weapons in favor of the two knives as the long jump/self heal/katana stab seems like a very deadly combination leaving you at potentially full HP and 1 kill.

Dart Gun

Make poison damage stack, but not the duration. If you hit a poisoned target with another Dart, the duration starts over. Also, only 3 stacks of poison can apply on a merc. (to avoid crazy amounts of poison stacking by using multiple Venom’s on one team)

With the current damage figures, even if you hit a Rhino with all 3 darts, and the poison stacks you will do a total of 186 damage… the Rhino will still live. This is assuming you wait for the poison to do its full damage before shooting him again. (which would take 24 seconds)

1 Dart - (30 x 1) + ((4 x 8)x1) = 62
2 Darts - (30 x 2) + ((4 x 8)x2) = 124
3 Darts - (30 x 3) + ((4 x 8)x3) = 186

I’d suggest changing it so the poison does percentage damage based on the merc’s max HP instead (not including HP given from Try Hard perk) This will help to pick off HP heavy mercs a bit better.

30 initial damage + 5% of max HP per second over 8 seconds.
pps (poison per second = 5% of merc’s max HP value)

If you hit Aura: (80 HP = pps 4)

1 Dart - (30 x 1) + ((pps x 8)x1) = 62
2 Darts - (30 x 2) + ((pps x 8)x2) = 124
3 Darts - (30 x 3) + ((pps x 8)x3) = 186

If you hit Rhino: (200 HP = 10 pps)

1 Dart - (30 x 1) + ((pps x 8)x1) = 110
2 Darts - (30 x 2) + ((pps x 8)x2) = 220
3 Darts - (30 x 3) + ((pps x 8)x3) = 330

This allows for the damage output to stay the same on weaker mercs like Aura, but still be a contender on heavy mercs like Thunder and Rhino as well.

Morphine Injector

I like the ability, but feel an 80% self heal is a bit too strong, especially for not being a healer.
This should get turned down a little, I feel 50% (40 HP) might be more acceptable.

Its secondary ability is interesting as well, however having to wait until you are 100% HP to use the ability to get your 20% bonus feels like it could be a bit tedious at times.

For instance, what if you get hit and are at 70/80 HP, but want to use an HP boost before jumping into the next room… well you can’t. You’d have to either heal yourself 10 HP and wait 22 seconds for the cool down, or you’d have to wait for natural healing to kick in and heal you 10 HP so you could use the HP boost… or you’d have to run and look for another source of healing to top you up.

These are all tedious choices, so I’d suggest making the ability heal you first, and if you have healing left over to applies to your HP boost.

Assuming the heal does 40 HP (50%) based on my my above suggestion. You could make it a percentage of the health you would have wasted after healing.

For instance…

HP Bonus = (((Current HP + Heal HP) - Max HP) / 2)

or
HP Bonus = (((40 + 40) - 80) /2) (bonus is 0)
HP Bonus = (((50 + 40) - 80) /2) (bonus is 5)
HP Bonus = (((60 + 40) - 80) /2) (bonus is 10)
HP Bonus = (((70 + 40) - 80) /2) (bonus is 15)
HP Bonus = (((80 + 40) - 80) /2) (bonus is 20)

This would allow you to use the healing ability when you need it, and not waste the HP Bonus factor.

Neat merc idea, would be nice to see something like this one day.
Hope you like the suggestions.

(Dr_Plantboss) #15

PLEASE MAKE SURE TO REREAD THE ORIGINAL POST, AS IT HAS BEEN REVISED (AGAIN)

  1. Projectile, but still very fast. I was think about an arc similar to the Grenade Launcher, but a little bit further.

  2. Hitting an enemy with multiple dart merely does the impact damage and refreshes the effect.

  3. I was thinking about a 0.7 second delay between shots, and it can hold up to three. So if you have 3 darts stored up, you can fire them all in 1.4 seconds.

  1. About 1.8 seconds from activating to healing. The cooldown would start upon pressing the “use” key. Another thing to note is that healing isn’t “instant” but is actually just healing you for a massive HP/sec ratio.

  2. You can use the ability while walking, but not sprinting (activating cancels sprint) and you can activate in midair, but cannot jump during the activation.

I already went over the way the dart were envisioned, here’s my revised outlook:
Deals 6% of target’s default max hp; ever consecutive dart launched by the same user adds 2% max hp to the poison. I’ll let you do the math on your own.

Ok, I can definitely see 80% being a bit strong, but I feel like 50% is still a bit low… How about 60% (48 HP)?

For clarification of my earlier statement, I think it would probably heal something like 20% max HP per second for 3 seconds. (16 HP/sec) This would allow for damage to be done while healing to make it less useful in a panic situation / melee combat.

I wasn’t entirely clear on the way the overheal works, so here’s what I meant:
Any leftover HP from the morphine gets put into a 20 HP bonus.

Changelog

  • Modified “Poison Dart” description to more accurately represent the weapon’s statistics.
  • Increased cooldown of “Morphine Injector” from 22 seconds to 25 seconds.
  • Modified “Morphine Injector” description to reflect new statistics.
  • Changed melee weapons from Katana, Cricket Bat, and Kukri, to Kukri, Beckhill combat Knife, and Stilnotto Stiletto.
  • Increased price to 50,000 credits.
  • Changed Merc Class to “Unknown”
  • Removed Herobrine.
(Elkus2000) #16

I actually really like these thoughts. I would want to smooth out the morphine injector though.

I would say yes, you can use it airborn, yes heal 65% of your max HP, but overheal is a problem. Here’s my beef.

Lets say you’re a girl with a knife. Let’s say it has chopper. Let’s go as far as to say you have a quickdraw chopper or quickdraw loadout, as most classes often do. You could pump yourself full of drugs, and now your lightning fast squishy merc is a lightning-fast 100Hp+ Merc. You could pop into a room, hit someone with a poison dart, and be on top of them with a knife faster than they could say “Oh sh*t it’s a french chick”. The HP and Speed ratios are there specifically to nerf out the bullet dodge potential, but if you go beyond that, we’ll have an issue.

So I would either remove the overheal, or give you an 8%-10% speed nerf for 7.6 seconds.

Other than that, I can say this is one merc I would have no problem seeing this merc in the game. It’s actually a pretty well-rounded idea. Might need some tweaks after introduction, but at the moment I can say this is one of the few mercs I haven’t been like “Oh God I hope none of the devs read this”.

(Dermott) #17

[left]It’s very weird and contrary concept to me.

The whole idea of directly applying slow killing poison in a such fast paced shoter is a big no. I want enemy dead as soon as possible. Why I should bother to shot at him poisoned dart when I can use standard gun to kill him much faster? The poison doesn’t really eliminate enemy from the fight, I’m giving him a chance to fight back.

Assaults are about firepower, durability and easy abilites. Your merc is not like them.

Although, the idea of anti-medic merc is fine. I would change dart pistol into something less demanding, like grenade. Enemies caught in blast radius would be debilitated and receive reduced healing effects for x seconds.

The other effect (probably harder to make it balanced) is making enemies non revivable (they go down like usually but with that debuff for a while or make them insta dead on kill).[/left]