New Merc - Atom

[Max_Plite]

REWORKED

Merc Name: Atom

Class: Medic
Health: 100
Speed: 430

Profile:
After countless hours of hard studying and gaining knowledge at the best universities in Poland and making tens (or even hundreds) of blueprints of live saving portable devices Atom decided to start his big medical career by going to London. But the only thing he achieved was full-time job as kitchen porter (funny isn’t it?). Or at least he tought so, until Dirty Bomb attack. The view of violence and pain made him believe again that his career is already starting - this time for good. He grabbed his self-made hi-tech OST-MED (don’t ask how he’s found parts for it) and run to the streets finally fulfilling his dreams of helping people in need and shooting the not-in-need ones.

Abilities:
-OLD VERSION-

1. OST-MED (Organic Structure of Tissue Materializing Emitter Device):
   His self-constructed device makes him able to constantly regenerate teammates’ organic structures from distance. After directing beam at teammate it will regenerate his health with maximum rate of 50HP/s. The further the target of healing the slower rate of regenerating, the slowest being 14HP/s at 8m (HP/s rates by distance written below). At further distances device cannot heal.
   OST-MED has duration of maximum 5-8s when constantly used and has cooldown from fully discharged of 10-15s. Device can be stopped and used at any time and cooldown time will be respectively shorter besides the moments when it nearly and fully depletes its energy: then you have to wait 2s to use it again.
   Atom can heal himself but only when he is healing other teammates: with the fixed rate of 8-11HP/s. OST-MED doesn’t deal any damage to the enemies. Also OST-MED isn’t lock-on, you have to directly aim at mates to heal them however hitbox checker is bigger so its easier to keep tracking them.

2. Defibrillator:
   Standard medic’s defib: revives fallen allies, kills alive enemies.

-NEW VERSION-

1. OST-MED (Organic Structure of Tissue Materializing Emitter Device) with KAC Module (Kinetic Atomic-Charger):
   His self-constructed device makes him able to constantly regenerate teammates’ organic structures from distance.
   It uses energy instead of standard fixed-time cooldown. After directing beam at teammate it will regenerate his health with maximum rate of 45HP/s. The further the target of healing the slower rate of regenerating and the less energy is used, the slowest being 17HP/s at 8m with the littlest amount of energy used when healing (HP/s and energy usage rates by distance written below). At further distances OST-MED does not heal.
   OST-MED has only slight lock-on to help you heal teammates while they are moving but also to prevent from anchoring to him and not rewarding good-aiming play.
   OST-MED has energy lasting for about 4-6 seconds when constantly healing friend at range of 1-2 meters and lasting longer even for 8-14 seconds at the range of 6-8 meters.
   Device can be stopped and used any time and while not being used energy will slowly regenerate itself over time with “cooldown” from fully discharged of 6-12 seconds.
   While OST-MED is being used Atom slowly restores his health with fixed rate of about 5-10HP/s - so this is the only way he can heal himself - by healing others.
   To prevent overhealing single target than helping whole team Atom’s OST-MED while healing only 1 target after short time from fully healing him will receive penalty: the rate of healing will be capped by 2 (so max = 22HP/s at short distance). But penalty doesn’t apply for other targets: if you switch to another teammate you’ll heal him with standard rate of healing. After short time Atom will be able to come back to his previous overhealed target.
   To prevent camping and somehow encourage him to help his team at frontline his OST-MED is equiped with KAC Module: the more bullet damage you receive while holding OST-MED the more energy you restore back. As Atom has Maximum Health amount of 100HP values are percentage fe.: when you receive 10HP damage you restore 10% energy.

2. Defibrillator:
   Standard medic’s defib: revives fallen allies, kills alive enemies.

Weapons:
Primary: G36C (main), KEK-10, Crotzni (stats of G36C are written below)
Secondary: M9 (main), Caulden, Simeon .357
Melee: Beckhill (main), Stilnotto, Cricket

Summary (Usage): Atom as single-target healing medic can be very useful at pushing enemy position. His ability lets him make tanky mercs even more tankier by focusing on one squadmate or to heal all his squadmates effectively by switching from one to another. Also by being able to heal from distance he can stay behind the cover but the further the target of healing is the slower the regeneration will be.
However his unabilty to quickly heal himself makes him easy target for enemy team. Its way easier to shoot Atom first and end up his helpless mates after. Even though Atom’s target can survive constant enemy fire it is very little possible to make him survive air-strikes and grenades or insta-kills by sniper rifles/shotguns. Also he isn’t able to help whole his team during mass attack so left teammates are exposed to enemy fire. Other medic’s abilities can still be more useful: Aura’s healing station despite healing slower can heal whole team at once.

As for newer version: it will reward players for healing from short distance (as heals more) but wont discourage from healing from further distances (as saves energy). It will reward for healing whole team rather than one person (as lasts longer) but wont drasticaly discourage for healing one mate (as keeps obstacle). Also it will encourage player to go to the line of fire with his team (as restores energy) but wont discourage by healing from behind an obstacle (as keeps you safe). Atom heals more effectively while in combat but too much confidence can kill him as he goes out of cover for energy.

Additional equipment stats:

G36C [no in-game name yet] stats:
Damage:14 // Headshot DMG: 28 // RoF: 550
Reload: 1.8 // MagSize: 35 // Range: 19
DPS: 128.3 // Recoil: Moderate // Headshot DPS: 256.66
I just noticed after making these stats it’s basically Timik-47 as PDW. But there is no weapon more powerful than PDW-9 and less than Blishlok yet so it can do the job.

OST-MED stats:
0m - 45 HP/s = 225 HP/5s, lasts for 5s
2m - 38 HP/s = 190 HP/5s, for 7s
4m - 31 HP/s = 155 HP/5s, for 9s
6m - 24 HP/s = 120 HP/5s, for 11s
8m - 17 HP/s = 85 HP/5s, for 13s
(to be remembered that can heal only 1 target at once)

For comparison:
Aura healing station - 26 HP/s = 130 HP/5s (at range of about 2-3 meters i think)
(but can heal many targets at once)

[Mr-Penguin]

Of all the healgun type ideas I’ve seen on this forum, this is probably the best one. Decaying heal rate over distance is a good idea, and he has no self-sustain.

Now, there’s an issue about pocket medics and using the gun to make a gunfight impossible to win, but it’s a start!

[bgyoshi]

Does anyone know what the game tick rates are? Important for figuring out HP per tick for constant regen items like this

[Max_Plite]

If its what you meant: the healing don’t have to be based on “health per unit” like it shoots “units” that themself regenerate fixed amount of health.
Instead i thought of programming it to just check if player using this gun aims at friend, and if yes the healed player is given effect of regen with amount of health/sec defined by checked range (between 0-2meters or 6-8 meters etc.). So game gives effect of healing to player (like medpacks do) when Atom is aiming and using his gun at him.
Tickrate will be problem rather when checking between border-of-HP/s ranges like 2.01 and 1.99 meters (1.99- 50HP/s while 2.01- 41HP/s) because the change doesnt need to be constant.

If you meant game tickrate for HP/s : Auras heals allies with rate of 26HP/s however it heals herself with rate of 24HP/s. Tickrate must be at least refreshing to rates of 13/s and 12/s (26/2 and 24/2) so its high enough for even numbers/s (meaning at least 30Hz). So slight tweak to make HP/s values even can be made.

[Max_Plite]

Just added the line “Even though Atom’s target can survive constant enemy fire it is very little possible to make him survive air-strikes and grenades or insta-kills by sniper rifles/shotguns”
It looks OP to have 48HP/s healed Rhino but look at Aura - she can heal WHOLE team of Rhinos at once with only twice slower HP/s

[bgyoshi]

@“Max Plite” said:

If you meant game tickrate for HP/s : Auras heals allies with rate of 26HP/s however it heals herself with rate of 24HP/s. Tickrate must be at least refreshing to rates of 13/s and 12/s (26/2 and 24/2) so its high enough for even numbers/s (meaning at least 30Hz). So slight tweak to make HP/s values even can be made.

That’s the rate. The tick rate determines how 26 HP/s is delivered to you. You aren’t getting 26 HP every second, you’re getting a constant stream of HP that adds up to 26 over every second. The way the game would determine how many “events” occur in one second would be the tick rate.

If it delivers 12 ticks per second then you would be getting almost 2 hp per tick, so 50 hp/s would be slightly higher than 4 per tick.

IF you know the tick rate you can calculate the HP gain under fire. You have to make sure that sitting 0m away from someone and healing them doesn’t make their heal rate higher than the possible damage rate.

[Max_Plite]

I already calculated that if Auras station heals both 26HP/s AND 24HP/s that means there are minimum 30 ticks per second (30Hz). Or it can be 60Hz as well, who knows
So in the worst scenario these numbers HAVE to be at least even.

Also, average damage per second for PDWs (which are weaker than assault weapon) is at about 126 HP/s. Rhino while shooting minigun is slow enough to out-DPS him.
As i said, you don’t have to shoot healed target: you can shoot Atom which isn’t healing himself effectively enough and he can’t use his weapon when he is healing = easy target for flanking.

[bgyoshi]

@“Max Plite” said:

I already calculated that if Auras station heals both 26HP/s AND 24HP/s that means there are minimum 30 ticks per second (30Hz). Or it can be 60Hz as well, who knows

So in the worst scenario these numbers HAVE to be at least even.

But that’s not necessarily true.

Netcode

If it’s 60 ticks then you’re getting .8 HP per tick and taking around… hmm.

The MK-46 at 100% accuracy deals around 2.2 damage per tick. The more common accuracy is around 35% so that’s about .66 damage per tick, which is lower than the heal rate.

BLSHLOK at 100% accuracy does 2 damage per tick, so average accuracy is around .6 damage per tick

So basically, someone being healed at 50 HP/s would need to be focused down by 2 people to take about .4 damage per tick or 68 damage per second. That’s pretty extreme. This guy plus Aura on a team would be pretty insane.

I don’t see why the top rate can’t be more like 30 HP/s with potent packs at about 36 HP/s. At that point they would still have a clear advantage over Aura when it comes to single target healing, without being too nutty.

[Max_Plite]

Ok sorry my bad, i don’t know why i thought of it in whole seconds
24HP/s with 60Hz = 0.4HP/tick
26HP/s = 0.4(3) HP/tick
and: 50HP/s = 0.8(3) HP/tick…
…just better leave rounding HP/tick for them, its minor thing for us.

About accuracy of 35%: I said the heal gun is NOT lock-on. So basically if your target of healing is moving you’ll have as bad time aiming at him as your enemies meaning not whole power of healing will be used. On the other hand if your target is stationary and you heal him even with 100% accuracy it won’t be hard for enemies to land shots on him too.

[bgyoshi]

@“Max Plite” said:
About accuracy of 35%: I said the heal gun is NOT lock-on. So basically if your target of healing is moving you’ll have as bad time aiming at him as your enemies meaning not whole power of healing will be used. On the other hand if your target is stationary and you heal him even with 100% accuracy it won’t be hard for enemies to land shots on him too.

Yeah I know it won’t lock on, but the idea is you bunker down right up against a Fragger or Rhino so they take up your entire screen and block you from being hit, that way you don’t have to aim. The enemies will still need to strafe to try and throw off the aim of incoming fire. Even standing still, bullet spread alone will guarantee no one gets 100% accuracy, not to mention aimpunch from being hit yourself. This would also encourage more snipers, since it would basically required a headshot to kill the person.

Your abilities should reward skilled players, instead of giving a handicap to less skilled players. Giving a high heal rate to compensate difficult aim is the wrong way to approach it. Instead you should give it a high heal rate assuming skilled aim, so that less skilled players have a harder time using it and are given incentives to improve.

I do like the idea, I just think the max heal rate needs to be reduced to something marginally better than an aura station.

[Max_Plite]

I kinda thought of that too: maximal duration when constantly using is (lets say) 5 seconds BUT from fully discharged cooldown is 10 seconds = twice as much. That means heal rate in long term healing will be capped by 3. So even when you are hugging Rhino in time of use-with-recharge time= 15 seconds your rate will be 16HP/s.
And after that 5-second rush you wont be able to heal no more for 10 seconds

I agree, the skill-less hug-healing without need of aiming doesn’t seem right for DB but look
at Phoenix: he can just run into group of teammates and insta-heal 100HP for each of them and also himself without need to move a mouse.

[bgyoshi]

@“Max Plite” said:
I kinda thought of that too: maximal duration when constantly using is (lets say) 5 seconds BUT from fully discharged cooldown is 10 seconds = twice as much. That means heal rate in long term healing will be capped by 3. So even when you are hugging Rhino in time of use-with-recharge time= 15 seconds your rate will be 16HP/s.
And after that 5-second rush you wont be able to heal no more for 10 seconds

I agree, the skill-less hug-healing without need of aiming doesn’t seem right for DB but look
at Phoenix: he can just run into group of teammates and insta-heal 100HP for each of them and also himself without need to move a mouse.

There’s distinct difference between instaheal and regeneration heal. It’s true he can instant heal 100HP, but it’s limited to once every x seconds. That means the time between uses means there is no healing happening. With regen heal, there is no gap in heal time, it works effectively as damage reduction over time. So you have to take into account how the heal rate affects the damage rate. You are proposing the option of having a single effectively unkillable merc for 5 seconds, or a mediocre heal rate for the team for 5 seconds. I think the intent of numbers is sound and correct, but in practice it won’t work the way you want it to.

I think your idea would work much better if you gave the beam a constant heal rate with the same effective range, but unlimited use. The max rate would be no more than an aura station between 0 and 3m, and fall off up to half an aura station at 8m (as you propose with a slightly better bottom end). When you activate the OST med ability, the heal rate gains 40% effectiveness and loses the fall off for 5s.

In practice, players would run around beaming their team, basically being a mobile single-target aura station, who can pop his ability behind a tank to charge in. If the tank gets headshot, he still has some time to switch players without risk of losing his ability’s effectiveness due to a changing range.

A medic should always be able to heal at all times. Med packs are single-target regen healing that can be stockpiled. Aura is an AoE health pack that is stationary only. Phoenix is an intermittent AoE health pack that’s mobile. This guy would be a single-target Aura with an overheal ability.

[Max_Plite]

The tought after falloff was to prevent Atom from healing fully effectively while being behind cover 8m away from target. Its better to make him be forced to go to the danger-zone together with Tank so he cant camp.
After reading your comment i have idea of making his ability have no HP/s falloff in first few meters (up to 3m) but at the cost of lower highest-HP/s healing (max 30HP/s). It would make healed target still killable and would not force you to hug him.
ALSO when you are constantly healing one target your HP/s regen rate could be dropping with time so you’ll be forced to switch between healing targets. But then it could even more make your role similiar to Aura’s station.

In practice, just 2 mercs sitting at Auras station can be nearly unkillable for 3 people not even talking about 1 poor enemy… And Auras station rewards camping even more than running with med-gun

BTW: I don’t like giving abilities such boosts for other abilities or having too many of them (You can say Phoenix have 3 abilities… but he can use only 2, the 3rd is used only when he has fallen). Also OST-MED ist name of healgun :v

[bgyoshi]

Right, and Aura stations already heal at 26 HP/s and you’re proposing doubling it. 1m is plenty of space to hide behind a door or crouch behind a counter, and this is how players good or bad will play him. Putting yourself in the line of fire goes against being a medic, as the point is to support your team from cover behind them or around corners, and mostly be an aid to covering the flank. The biggest complaint you’re going to get is “Atom is too weak to heal in the line of fire and healing is too weak to heal from cover.”

The camping isn’t running with a heal gun, it’s being on defense or covering a C4 plant. Especially on maps like Trainyard, Underground, Terminal… where the C4 area has a lot of cover and corners to hide behind, you can sit in place behind a desk or even just a Turtle shield 0-1m away from a standing Fragger and heal him without moving or fear of being shot, at twice the strength of an aura station.

[Max_Plite]

The thing is, theoretically all medics can hide behind while healing: Aura - places station right behind cover and you cant destroy it; Sparks and Sawbonez - can run around behind cover and throw medpacks at one merc until they end (cause of insta-regen); Phoenix - just like prevoius pair can stay right behind corner and use his healing pulse (but their abilities at least end). And the best is Sparks who can defib fallen teammates from very far range when camping behind cover.
Im not saying that all of these medics camp, but they could to help their teams.

Also i’ve seen Auras (yes im reffering to Aura too much :P) that just flanks enemy team, silently places her station and spreads chaos behind enemy lines (and stations aren’t supposed to be used as attack tactic, yet they are). But after few times enemy team will start to watch out for flanks more.
Turtle on the other hand just places shield and makes his team unkillable. Without use of molotovs (to push them out) or explosives and concentrated fire you cant kill them.
So to outsmart enemy team can just change route and flank Atom and his friend to deal with him first… or just together with team concentrate fire.
I know these were deployables: mercs place devices and then are free to roam, being able to fight. Atom can’t fight while healing despite having quite powerful main weapons so he has to camp…

…So the key is to force him to help his teammates without camping but also not to make him useless at attack. HP/s rate falloff is good idea for one reason: even if you are camping but target is right besides you he cant move to avoid fire = easy target; but if target starts moving he also moves further so target receives less healing = still quite easy target. And its only one merc, not 2 nor 3 nor 8. No falloff would reward Atom for camping even more.

The whole idea that he needs to hold Medgun to heal and cannot use weapons make him vurnerable enough to force him to hide. So the cooldown of ability is another thing to prevent camping: after discharging medgun he can swap to his weapon and fight. But there needs to be something that can heal him after gunfight. So there he can slowly regenerate his health but only when he is healing someone else (also there can be option that when he heals one target his self-healing stops to prevent tanks-buffing).
So when he disharges gun - he goes fighting and helps team, when he is hurt - he starts healing and also heals himself.

That took a lot of time to write
Please keep coming with thoughts of possible exploits so i can make him better.

[bgyoshi]

@“Max Plite” said:

The whole idea that he needs to hold Medgun to heal and cannot use weapons make him vurnerable enough to force him to hide. So the cooldown of ability is another thing to prevent camping: after discharging medgun he can swap to his weapon and fight. But there needs to be something that can heal him after gunfight. So there he can slowly regenerate his health but only when he is healing someone else (also there can be option that when he heals one target his self-healing stops to prevent tanks-buffing).

Like I said, the ideas and the methodology are in the right place but you’re not thinking about it from a realistic perspective, and you’re instead trying to approach it from a raw numbers and intended mode of play approach. What you need to do is think of the way that a player would play him and what a player would want from a medic like this.

If you’re giving 50 HP/s then it won’t matter what the enemy does because your team will be there to cover you.

If you can only heal for 5 seconds every 15 seconds, you’re going to be a relatively ineffective team medic.

Players need to have the ability to be always healing with smart play. The fact that players have to switch weapons to heal is a downside all on it’s own. The idea that they can’t defend themselves while healing works well for the character, but it doesn’t need the additional downside of only working for a couple seconds.

Even if you don’t like the idea of buff abilities, that’s what medics are good at. The fact that the heal beam always has a fall off while unbuffed is good and necessary, but making a Q ability that boosts your heal rate and removes the fall off is pretty reasonable. Especially if that boost ability comes with the added downside of losing your heal ability for 15 seconds. So the player can now choose between running around and healing their entire team at some reduced rate, but always being able to, versus popping their ability at the cost of losing their heal for awhile.

But the point remains that they should have the ability to constantly heal if they want. They can’t heal and shoot at the same time, regardless

[Max_Plite]

Your medgun buff idea is practically Uber-charge from TF2 (there was one than let you heal way faster not the immortality one). Atom would be able to wait for the wave of enemies to charge and then use buff to make target impossible to kill and thus destroying whole enemy team if used in right time. The same when attacking - just comes to the point and while sitting behind cover buffs his friend to take point. Sounds nice - but its like insta-placing-from-afar station of Aura for one person - still rewards you for camping. And i bet during this buff players still would heal only one merc rather than whole their team.

Don’t look so hard at stats i’ve written above - these are not perfect and are only temporary (cause i ain’t no perfect and need time to make them better). I made them to fill the space and they can change as i write down here.
His medgun is usable for short amount of time but it can stop healing and can be used even mid-cooldown. I can just make duration longer and cooldown faster to be more effective (in 50/50 style or even better).
Also i can make thing that when he heals one target for longer time (or when he is still healing him when target has full or high HP already) to have healing rate drop to make spamming at one target less effective.
I dont want him to heal non-stop to not make his weapons useless. Rates of healing can be higher to let players quickly heal their teammates (with the thing i said above that healing one target is uneffective) but make enemy players be able after long non-stop push to win the fight. If player non-stop spams healing on teammates even tho they have full health enemy will have chance to charge. So it lays in players skill to know when to heal and who to heal.

Also Medic’s role isn’t all-about healing: he has to fight too (like others do)
So he has effective times of healing (duration of ability) and effective times of fighting (duration of cooldown [which, once more saying, isnt fixed!!!])

Player wants to heal? - he aims medgun at his teammates; Wants to attack enemy? - heals one target (but knows it wont last long so he needs team); wants to fight? - heals all friends full and rush.

Personally im using Phoenix: i insta-heal some mates, and go fighting. When im low at health im waiting with my team back. Cooldown ends - kicking in again. It works and i enjoy it

[bgyoshi]

@“Max Plite” said:
Your medgun buff idea is practically Uber-charge from TF2 (there was one than let you heal way faster not the immortality one). Atom would be able to wait for the wave of enemies to charge and then use buff to make target impossible to kill and thus destroying whole enemy team if used in right time. The same when attacking - just comes to the point and while sitting behind cover buffs his friend to take point. Sounds nice - but its like insta-placing-from-afar station of Aura for one person - still rewards you for camping. And i bet during this buff players still would heal only one merc rather than whole their team.

Your character idea is practically the medic from TF2

The only thing I had an issue with was the stat rates anyway. The idea as a whole is fine, though I think we need another engineer and another assault before we can get another medic.

[Max_Plite]

EDIT: Sorry didn’t noticed your latest comment Made some changes, to make him not camp as you said before. Hope they wont be too much:

After some time i came to other conclussion: As normal DB player who sees Atom for first time or played with him a while - i would like his medgun to make me able to effectively heal single teammates at longer distances than other medics and help them (him) as we charge at enemy or are being charged at. As someone who have to deal with Atom as enemy - i would like him not to camp all the time behind cover where i cant reach him and while he finally comes out not to make some single merc Uber-charged Heavy from TF2.

So i came with this:
To make it less complicated lets merge heal-rate falloff and cooldown together - but reverse it.
Instead of standard duration now it has x amount of energy: the closer your target of healing is the more (but not significantly) regeneration he gets BUT also battery of your medgun drains faster. Analogicaly: the further - the less rate but medgun discharges slower:
With high rate of healing at short distances you can make short-time lasting buffed obstacle for enemy, but you can still heal your other teammates at longer distances, slower but saving much more energy for another short-buff.
Also if you keep healing one target after reaching some healed-HP-value the regeneration rate for this target will be slower until you switch to another target and heal him a bit (no switching for split second, it wont work you have to wait some time).
This will reward players for healing from short distance (as heals more) but wont discourage from healing from further distances (as saves energy) and also reward for healing whole team rather than one person (as lasts longer) but wont drasticaly discourage for healing one mate (as keeps obstacle)…

But he would still camp behind cover anyway… No, because of second thing (not ability):
As from now you would also have Kinetic Atomic-Charge Module for your OST-MED - the more bullet damage you receive the more energy your medgun recovers. With keeping in mind that you still have your fixed self-regeneration of xHP/s when healing others it would reward player for taking some damage but as it only recharges when you are holding OST-MED in hands it would also discourage him from taking damage on purpose when holding weapon (shooting and after killing enemy healing himself).
This way playing as Atom will make player to heal whole team while also running among them at the line of fire. Of course shooting Atom will still be useful for enemy - he doesnt gain more HP for himself as he is being shot.
What about on purpose running out of cover and coming back? Enemy can just ignore Atom then and make him drain his energy faster = making him heal less effectively - and kill him when he feels too confident to come out for energy.
Atom + healing target(s)= at least 2 mercs. So it isn’t bad to need at least 2 enemies to kill them.
Also remember that busy on being shot and healing others Atom can be easily flanked.

If it all seems over-complicated for new players: there can be little screen on medgun showing symbolic heal/rate and by different colours telling if your target is healed for too long or the gun is discharged.

So now Atom still have only 2 abilities (OTS-MED and Defib) but has in-build active micro-ability for his weapon.
[Stats to be discussed]