why I think its needed
So Rhino, the guy is an absolute unit. But in my opinion does not keep up with the other offensive mercs in his catagory, Nader, Fragger and Thunder. Each of the the other guys have their primary guns and their abilities are able to do damage to get people to move out of place so they can be downed by the assault’s guns, and in thunders case blind them to make them stay where they are so he can run in and kill. Rhino on the other hand cant do this well. It can be argued just by the nature of rhino that his primary is his minigun so he does not have anything to help him be a wallbreaker.
This in turn makes rhino, in my opinion, unfun to play because he can 1v1 guys just fine but other than that if two players co-ordinate together rhino can get melted real quick and we all know of the extremely fun playstyle of sitting on an aura station with Unshakable to just soak damage.
Actual concept
So to my actual change concept; He gets given a new tool. This new deployable would be a stand alone deployable like aura’s station (meaning it doesnt destroy itself over time like the skyshield). What this deployable is, is effectively just a large weight slamming into the ground creating a small shockwave in a small radius (if we can have bionic gauntlets and shield generators, this doesnt seem too farfetched). I believe that the shockwave should be able to pass through walls as its shaking the ground. Enemies caught in the direct radius of the shockwave would have their screen shake slightly and would “stumble” by stumbling it doesn’t knock them to the ground but slows them down for ~1 second. Also by stumbling it makes them off guard which acts like a weakened version of the snitch drones spotted causing them to take 10% extra damage in that ~1 second. Obviously in my vision there is a cooldown before slams from the machine. Of ~5 seconds meaning that it isnt keeping the effect of stumbling on the enemies constantly. The slight damage increase makes it easier for him to use his shotguns and not need to almost completely rely on his minigun.
The machine has a relitive low HP of 40 taking bullet damage at 65% of full bullet damage and 110% of explosive damage and , this is to encourage people to pick it up and keep it moving to discourage hyper defensive play. The cooldown is 20 seconds and picking it up returns 10 seconds. This gives it a clear weakness to explosives and a decent bulk against bullets.
This would be a straight buff so there has to be something removed from him, I invisioned that his HP was lowered to 170 and his head hitbox was increased slightly in size, making him easier to pick off but still not one shottable by a fel-ix headshot from full.
How does this help Rhino?
The tool allows him to, with skill and prediction, make enemies vulnerable through cover and have more than a basic defensive playstyle. And actually give him a threatening pressence on attack. In turn making him more fun.
In terms of his lore also it wouldnt seem out of place for him to have made this, theres more than enough quotes from him ingame showing that he is smart.
~Just before posting this i had an idea for the name of this. How does the Subsurface Boomer / Resonation device sound? it would make the place down quote for him seem natural ~ “Boomer up” or “Resonation device is now active”. the second one sounds like something he would say.
give me your thoughts and opinions on this 