Active Item: Pugilist

[tsar2tsar]

Intended for use with Melee Builds, Pugilist is supposed to be a Tier 4 Relic that's price at 6.4k Souls.
When purchased:

+15% Melee Damage
-15% Melee Distance
+5% Bullet Resist


When Active:

The Relic has a 50s Cooldown
Your next Melee pierces through enemy parries, but deals -15% Less Damage.
Your next Melee makes you Unstoppable
The enemy you Melee is Disarmed for 3.5s

For Clarification, the Active is Active until you melee Once. If you happen to hit more then one person, then only one person gets Disarmed. You still get Unstoppable and you still pierce through all Parries.

The Idea for Pugilist is to be a sort of reliable end-game Melee build.
My mindset as well is this is obviously paired with Crushing Fists, and there's plenty of ways to counter a Melee build, whether it's Stuns and Roots, or just Parrying. There's plenty of items built around the Parry mechanic. I believe that an active item for Melee would be an interesting and fun way to encourage a melee build. I could see this being predominantly used on Abrams, Bebop, Ivy, Viscous, Billy, and Calico.

I'm open for discussion as well.

 

[adeptusforgeceo]

Okay, just as a question: how does this work with light melees? this obviously has synergies with heavy melee and melee charge distance, but what's to stop someone from popping it and light meleeing someone point blank for the disarm?

You already have it pierce through parries so doing a light melee is worse, but if its done on a melee-scaling ability, then half of its effects are wasted or outright detrimental. And does it make you unstoppable for the duration of the move? How would the unstoppable work with viscous puddle punch?

I already feel that piercing through parries is a bad way to handle things, melee scaling items/abilities are the way to go, but this has added downsides that I don't know if you've fully thought through. The disarm is a nice touch though, and feels both thematic & somewhat well balanced. I just feel like it'd be abused or redundant on certain heroes.

 

[tsar2tsar]

Okay, just as a question: how does this work with light melees? this obviously has synergies with heavy melee and melee charge distance, but what's to stop someone from popping it and light meleeing someone point blank for the disarm?

You already have it pierce through parries so doing a light melee is worse, but if its done on a melee-scaling ability, then half of its effects are wasted or outright detrimental. And does it make you unstoppable for the duration of the move? How would the unstoppable work with viscous puddle punch?

I already feel that piercing through parries is a bad way to handle things, melee scaling items/abilities are the way to go, but this has added downsides that I don't know if you've fully thought through. The disarm is a nice touch though, and feels both thematic & somewhat well balanced. I just feel like it'd be abused or redundant on certain heroes.

It is a very situational item, Yes.
Instead of saying "but veil walker-" or "but shadow weave"

I'll say, It would still proc / be active on light melees. Kind of like if you use a good ability unintended. It's meant to be used like Sinclair's ult, where you activate it and then focus on getting a heavy melee, or else you waste it and it's on cooldown.

On an ability that scales melee, It wouldn't be as powerful as straight up meleeing. So things like Viscous or Venator wouldn't get the benefits of Disarmed or Unstoppable if they're doing a holy-wall combo, or puddle punches. It's strictly a hold Q and get your melee item.

 

[tsar2tsar]

It is a very situational item, Yes.
Instead of saying "but veil walker-" or "but shadow weave"

I'll say, It would still proc / be active on light melees. Kind of like if you use a good ability unintended. It's meant to be used like Sinclair's ult, where you activate it and then focus on getting a heavy melee, or else you waste it and it's on cooldown.

On an ability that scales melee, It wouldn't be as powerful as straight up meleeing. So things like Viscous or Venator wouldn't get the benefits of Disarmed or Unstoppable if they're doing a holy-wall combo, or puddle punches. It's strictly a hold Q and get your melee item.

Okay, just as a question: how does this work with light melees? this obviously has synergies with heavy melee and melee charge distance, but what's to stop someone from popping it and light meleeing someone point blank for the disarm?

You already have it pierce through parries so doing a light melee is worse, but if its done on a melee-scaling ability, then half of its effects are wasted or outright detrimental. And does it make you unstoppable for the duration of the move? How would the unstoppable work with viscous puddle punch?

I already feel that piercing through parries is a bad way to handle things, melee scaling items/abilities are the way to go, but this has added downsides that I don't know if you've fully thought through. The disarm is a nice touch though, and feels both thematic & somewhat well balanced. I just feel like it'd be abused or redundant on certain heroes.

The overall intended purpose is to make Melee builds more reliable and useful, and making it so you have a situational "punishing strike" if that makes sense. Phantom Strike into a 'Pugilist' Melee with Crushing Blow would be very damning, but that also puts you into the center of everything.

Unstoppable only lasts while meleeing, and when the melee connects. Essentially making it a 1-2 second invulnerability frame.

To address the light-melee concern, That could be a valid / concerning issue. Light meleeing to get a free disarm, Perhaps it can be lowered or only trigger disarm off of heavy-melees specifically, and light meleeing only grants the pierce and unstoppable.

 

[RemOrRiot]

First, I think it should be labelled as passive; Even though the effect is triggered by the player, its only activates on top of an existing mechanic; That is how most items are labelled anyway, unless you want it to take up an active slot specifically. Otherwise, it would be passive with the first text saying "on your next melee", could even specify heavy melee instead of light

Secondly, I would have it "charge" up rather than an outright cooldown, like how tankbuster takes time to fully charge up but is usable even when its not fully ready, its just weaker. Then it can apply a firerate % deduction based on charge, and only at max charge inflict disarm; Same for piercing parry, only works when fully charged. Light melee's cut the current charge in half, and therefore can only apply up to 50% of the intended effects, never gaining the special properties from consuming ALL stacks.

"Passive: Gains charge/stacks over time, which are applied to the target on your next melee hit. Inflicts -10% fire rate per stack for 3s, at max stacks pierces parry and instead disarms.
*Light melee's apply half of current stacks. Enemies cannot get reapplied this debuff for 10s after being hit".

Then if is 50s CD, make it be like 1 stack every 5s, then 10 stacks = 100% fire rate down aka disarm. If thats too OP to get 80% fire rate down, then make it -5% per stack up to 50%,, afterwhich it disarms instead

I like the idea, though I think piercing parry is a strong enough effect it should be its own thing. Puddle punches and other melee attacks also have the same rules, so viscous max punches can be a little crazy but given the slow charge rate of this item shouldn't be too bad.

 

[tsar2tsar]

First, I think it should be labelled as passive; Even though the effect is triggered by the player, its only activates on top of an existing mechanic; That is how most items are labelled anyway, unless you want it to take up an active slot specifically. Otherwise, it would be passive with the first text saying "on your next melee", could even specify heavy melee instead of light

Secondly, I would have it "charge" up rather than an outright cooldown, like how tankbuster takes time to fully charge up but is usable even when its not fully ready, its just weaker. Then it can apply a firerate % deduction based on charge, and only at max charge inflict disarm; Same for piercing parry, only works when fully charged. Light melee's cut the current charge in half, and therefore can only apply up to 50% of the intended effects, never gaining the special properties from consuming ALL stacks.

"Passive: Gains charge/stacks over time, which are applied to the target on your next melee hit. Inflicts -10% fire rate per stack for 3s, at max stacks pierces parry and instead disarms.
*Light melee's apply half of current stacks. Enemies cannot get reapplied this debuff for 10s after being hit".

Then if is 50s CD, make it be like 1 stack every 5s, then 10 stacks = 100% fire rate down aka disarm. If thats too OP to get 80% fire rate down, then make it -5% per stack up to 50%,, afterwhich it disarms instead

I like the idea, though I think piercing parry is a strong enough effect it should be its own thing. Puddle punches and other melee attacks also have the same rules, so viscous max punches can be a little crazy but given the slow charge rate of this item shouldn't be too bad.

I had the idea of ability melees don't count, so things like Viscous or Blessed Melees wouldn't be stupidly broken.

 

[RemOrRiot]

I had the idea of ability melees don't count, so things like Viscous or Blessed Melees wouldn't be stupidly broken.

Nah I think *preventing such* edge cases like that is lame, if you have a melee ability then you WANT melee items to combo it with. Its more fun. The idea isn't to prevent synergy, just to make sure that synergy doesn't override the core ability.

Ex: Disarming targets with puddle punch is certainly very very powerful; But if it only applies to 1 target, and to even apply disarm you need FULL charge for disarm, then viscous has to choose to NOT puddle punch for the entire item charge to get the disarm. If they're doing a punch build, then all of a sudden the item can be a detriment because by spamming them you never hit the items full effect.

But applying small, consistent fire rate debuffs at a range on top of doing anyway, punching them repeatedly at a distance? Thats a pretty good upgrade, but the faster you spam the less impact each debuff has. Its a give-and-take, both are very powerful but you can't have it both ways. I'd run it on billy knowing when I chain people in, I can apply at least some sort of debuff to each enemy I hit with the bat, even if not all at once.

 

[RemOrRiot]

Melee definitely needs more items, late game its pointless and early game its often too risky to build into because everyone has a dedicated "nuh-uh" button to counter it. I made a post about how to help the early game problem (https://forums.playdeadlock.com/threads/feint-t1-weapon-active-for-early-melee-cancels.123387/, advice welcome) I might make a post for the late game too

 

[tsar2tsar]

Nah I think *preventing such* edge cases like that is lame, if you have a melee ability then you WANT melee items to combo it with. Its more fun. The idea isn't to prevent synergy, just to make sure that synergy doesn't override the core ability.

Ex: Disarming targets with puddle punch is certainly very very powerful; But if it only applies to 1 target, and to even apply disarm you need FULL charge for disarm, then viscous has to choose to NOT puddle punch for the entire item charge to get the disarm. If they're doing a punch build, then all of a sudden the item can be a detriment because by spamming them you never hit the items full effect.

But applying small, consistent fire rate debuffs at a range on top of doing anyway, punching them repeatedly at a distance? Thats a pretty good upgrade, but the faster you spam the less impact each debuff has. Its a give-and-take, both are very powerful but you can't have it both ways. I'd run it on billy knowing when I chain people in, I can apply at least some sort of debuff to each enemy I hit with the bat, even if not all at once.

That's true, but I am worried about melee venator. Piercing parry with a blessed melee sounds borderline instakill and very gamey. Though, I do like the idea of counterspell being able to block the pierce. Kinda like a 4d chess moment, yknow?

 

[Fred_]

I'm pretty sure that un-parriable melees can be a bit of a balancing issue, it's why currently the only instance of this being a thing is either using Unstoppable or Runed Gauntlets.

Having such an effect tied to a 50s Cooldown would make it quite hard to execute with in practice unless you're initiating a fight and I do not think that it would be very enjoyable for the enemy to parry just to find out that it doesn't work, especially with such a long cooldown which would be a nightmare to keep track of for an opponent.
(The reason why Unstoppable is not too problematic there is that it allows for multiple un-parriable melees + has to be activated before hand which provides a bit of a buffer between activation of Unstop and charging up a Heavy Melee. That means it's easier to telegraph once it's obvious that unstoppable has been proc'd.)

As people already mentioned here, light melees are not really well accounted for here - every melee related item should synergyse well with both light and heavy melees or make it clear that one or the other doesn't get accounted for.

Personally I think the best way to handle un-parriable melees is to make it into an active item like unstoppable or downsize the effect a bit more (ex.: Make parries not affect you but you deal no damage when parried still) and make it trigger more often which makes it easier to work against.

 

[tsar2tsar]

I'm pretty sure that un-parriable melees can be a bit of a balancing issue, it's why currently the only instance of this being a thing is either using Unstoppable or Runed Gauntlets.

Having such an effect tied to a 50s Cooldown would make it quite hard to execute with in practice unless you're initiating a fight and I do not think that it would be very enjoyable for the enemy to parry just to find out that it doesn't work, especially with such a long cooldown which would be a nightmare to keep track of for an opponent.
(The reason why Unstoppable is not too problematic there is that it allows for multiple un-parriable melees + has to be activated before hand which provides a bit of a buffer between activation of Unstop and charging up a Heavy Melee. That means it's easier to telegraph once it's obvious that unstoppable has been proc'd.)

As people already mentioned here, light melees are not really well accounted for here - every melee related item should synergyse well with both light and heavy melees or make it clear that one or the other doesn't get accounted for.

Personally I think the best way to handle un-parriable melees is to make it into an active item like unstoppable or downsize the effect a bit more (ex.: Make parries not affect you but you deal no damage when parried still) and make it trigger more often which makes it easier to work against.

I think my only point was that I wanted melee builds to get more then melee range + crushing fists. The idea was to have Pugilist give melee characters a dedicated item basically, or something to have melee play around more.

Sure it's really good if you initiate, but realistically piercing 1parry doesn't account for all the other times your melee doesn't. It sounds strong, but I do think that there's definitely a place for it. But I can see your concern with being telegraphed. For telegraphing it, perhaps it could take the melee-hand of the model and give it an aura, or something. Similar to Venator when he has blessed-abilities.

And, well I can see why it doesn't synergize with light-melee, but it's pretty clear this is made to tack onto a heavy melee.