He doesn't have any tools that actually help him stay in the fray.
I don't particularly agree, stick with me on this. On top of his base bullet resist and high health. The kit has a lot of damage negation, and the sources of that also give him a lot of movement. He doesn't have much sustain because he just outright doesn't take that damage.
His counter moves him forward and if the assailant is in his range he just goes straight too them. His 2 gives him the most damage negation with weaving since, despite it keeping him in place, he's not getting hurt and that's kind of fucking huge. Plus, he can force the opponent to
come to him if they get frustrated (or want to exploit that he cannot parry a melee without dropping this stance) or if he chooses to play risky and use his far reaching dash punch to get in. I forgot to put his movement stats but since he has
3 bars of stamina, laning phase (especially on solo) is either even or really in his favor.
His tools come from his kit and items. (hence the phrase "when he isn't busy training" in his bio) Like let me run some stuff by you:
- Extra stamina, that's four bars of stamina which gives him ALOT to work with and on top of that his stamina regen goes UP and his fire rate increases.
- Healing rite, pop healing rite and stay in 2 to weave while the enemy wastes ammo and Dempsey is healing since he's not taking any damage to cancel the healing rite. And like I said before, Unless they force him out of the stance if the enemy gets impatient and they go for him he can put the hurt on. And +3 spirit which scales a lot of his abilities and his primary and move speed.
-Close quarters, This is really self explanatory. More damage, more damage in his range that he's made to be in, and +4% bullet resist.
-Mystic reach, follow close quarters up with mystic reach? more range on like a bunch of shit and +7% bullet resist?
There's a lot of shit he can do and he's not a character that's meant to immediately win the game unless the person playing them is considerably good at him
he is going to get parried constantly. Are you planning any mechanics to counter that?
That makes no sense from a game design and gameplay standpoint that his primary fire would just get parried like that. It would mean that he literally gets to do nothing at all ever. Why would they do that, I'm not sure how you gathered that from the description of his gun.
What about Fire rate? Does that increase his basic combo rate? What about the cooldown after the 4th swing?
Fire rate would increase his combo rate but his recovery on the 4th swing would still be .64 seconds (this is also how mercenary from ROR2 works)
A couple more concerns, How does +Ammo work on this? This is a regular bonus that players get from both items and gold urns.
This is actually a very valid concern, with how the game currently is he either just wouldn't get this or wouldn't really benefit from it. Personally, I think he just wouldn't benefit from it. I like the idea of converting it into something else but this is genuinely something that would have to be deliberated with a real actual playable version.
but more thought needs to be put in to making him work within the existing melee mechanics.
There is no precedent for melee based characters in Deadlock that aren't aren't abilities that also do melee dmg or holding down Q as Abrams. The closest we get right now is Yamato. Who, right now, doesn't even use the melee half the time since current meta is gun Yamato or juicing spirit so you can mash your abilities to blitz someone to death and then OCCASIONALLY slapping someone.
Like I mentioned in the "thesis," I looked at Dota 2's melee roster for alot of inspiration and since this game already cannibalizes alot of Dota 2's roster and abilities I believe it to be fairly workable.
