Name: Diver (Karl Ryan)
Tagline: Slow – Steady – Zoning
Playstyle Concept:
A tank/zoner that compensates for poor mobility with better area control than other tanks. Compared to other tanks this makes it harder to push objectives he's defending, but makes him vulnerable if he's out of position.
Lore Concept:
A deep sea diver twisted by an encounter with the Adversary. Motivation for the ritual is to turn himself back to normal. Mix of Lovecraft & Bioshock inspiration.
Background:
A deep sea explorer could dive forever and never run out of discoveries. Such was the life of Karl Ryan, an adventurer and enthusiast of The Deep whose explorations were cut short, as they often were with adventuring types, by getting himself into trouble. One dive he stumbled across a temple deep within the Bermuda triangle, finding himself face to face with The Adversary. While it wasn’t quite so bad as dying, your mind nearly being destroyed and becoming permanently fused to your dive suit is not a pleasant experience. Now back on the surface, he wants the Patrons help to undo the process and bring him back to normal.
Weapon:
A harpoon gun. High bullet damage, but low firerate and ammo makes it a similar weapon to Geist and Holliday's revolvers.
Vitality Stats:
Ability 1: Throw Wrench
Throw a heavy wrench in an arc, dealing mixed melee/spirit damage to the first enemy it hits and applying a heavy slow.
Ability 2: Dredging Rush
Deal spirit damage to yourself and charge forward, healing for every enemy hero hit. Stagger (very, very briefly stun) any hit enemies.
Ability 3: The Bends
Taking any damage passively charges your pressure. Once full, activating the ability grants you a barrier and slightly reduces Naval Mine's cooldown.
Ultimate: Spectral Mines
Create a large minefield of spectral naval mines that explode when enemies get close. Each mine explodes independently, applying a stacking damage amp to every enemy caught in the blast. Mines persist for a long time after being created, and have a small delay before becoming active when first spawned.
Gameplay-wise I'm satisfied with how the character concept turned out. There's a lot of gameplay scenarios I can think of that let you use different parts of his kit to different effects.
His chase isn't good due to horrible mobility, but I think teamfights would still be fun for him because you get the general flow of Wrench Throw -> Rush to initiate, then Rush -> The Bends for sustain, ending off with dropping Spectral Mines behind the enemies' escape route to trap them.
Rush dealing self damage + the Bends charging off self damage & reducing Spectral Mines' cooldown is a possible cheese risk, so I think that Dredging Rush's self heal should only come from successful hero hits, so you can't cheese it against creep waves/jungle as much.
Another possible issue is that his kit might make it impossible to push against him if tuned poorly, but thanks to his horrible mobility he'd be very vulnerable to a Bebop hook/Paradox swap as long as his sustain from his 2 and 3 aren't tuned too high.
Tagline: Slow – Steady – Zoning
Playstyle Concept:
A tank/zoner that compensates for poor mobility with better area control than other tanks. Compared to other tanks this makes it harder to push objectives he's defending, but makes him vulnerable if he's out of position.
Lore Concept:
A deep sea diver twisted by an encounter with the Adversary. Motivation for the ritual is to turn himself back to normal. Mix of Lovecraft & Bioshock inspiration.
Background:
A deep sea explorer could dive forever and never run out of discoveries. Such was the life of Karl Ryan, an adventurer and enthusiast of The Deep whose explorations were cut short, as they often were with adventuring types, by getting himself into trouble. One dive he stumbled across a temple deep within the Bermuda triangle, finding himself face to face with The Adversary. While it wasn’t quite so bad as dying, your mind nearly being destroyed and becoming permanently fused to your dive suit is not a pleasant experience. Now back on the surface, he wants the Patrons help to undo the process and bring him back to normal.
Weapon:
A harpoon gun. High bullet damage, but low firerate and ammo makes it a similar weapon to Geist and Holliday's revolvers.
Vitality Stats:
- High HP (700-800) with strong scaling (50-55 per boon). Puts him on the high end.
- 6.3 m/s move speed (tied with Geist), 2 stamina. This would give Diver the worst base mobility in the game, even worse than Geist.
- Sprint speed boost of 4 m/s to compensate so he’s not totally incapable of changing lanes.
This character concept started with 3 constraints
1. I wanted to make a diving suit hero
2. I wanted them to have a kit that parallels Abrams and Billy
3. However, I wanted them to be slow like Geist
And everything built out from there.
Karl references Karl Heinrich from Lovecraft’s “The Temple.” Ryan references Andrew Ryan from Bioshock.
1. I wanted to make a diving suit hero
2. I wanted them to have a kit that parallels Abrams and Billy
3. However, I wanted them to be slow like Geist
And everything built out from there.
Karl references Karl Heinrich from Lovecraft’s “The Temple.” Ryan references Andrew Ryan from Bioshock.
Ability 1: Throw Wrench
Throw a heavy wrench in an arc, dealing mixed melee/spirit damage to the first enemy it hits and applying a heavy slow.
T1: More spirit damage
T2: Enemy hit lose 1 stamina, also increase slow amount
T3: Melee damage component is now Heavy Melee Damage
Upgrades are based on Warden & Viscous abilities, and the ability is meant to be a blend of Puddle Punch/Splatter/Alchemical Flask but harder to hit, being a single-target skillshot.
Ability 2: Dredging Rush
Deal spirit damage to yourself and charge forward, healing for every enemy hero hit. Stagger (very, very briefly stun) any hit enemies.
T1: Increase distance
T2: Gain bullet and melee resistance for every enemy hero hit
T3: Restore ammo for every enemy hero hit, and increased healing
Does not drag enemies along & extended stun them like Abrams, or stop when it hits the first enemy like Billy. Abrams and Billy’s kits include sustain on their 1 and 3 (assuming you buy lifestrike), and CC+mobility on their 2. Diver instead has CC on his 1, so his 2 is mobility+sustain to compensate.
Ability 3: The Bends
Taking any damage passively charges your pressure. Once full, activating the ability grants you a barrier and slightly reduces Naval Mine's cooldown.
T1: Increase barrier health
T2: Gain temporary spirit resistance
T3: Reduce damage needed to charge ability
By reducing Naval Mine's cooldown, I specifically means that it shaves a few seconds off it. So if it's 30 seconds left on the cooldown, when you use the Bends that's immediately reduced to 35 seconds left, for example. Adding weapon damage or mobility felt more obvious but overlaps with what Paige and Warden already have, so I needed something different. Ult timer should be very long to compensate for the free ult cooldown reduction.
Ultimate: Spectral Mines
Create a large minefield of spectral naval mines that explode when enemies get close. Each mine explodes independently, applying a stacking damage amp to every enemy caught in the blast. Mines persist for a long time after being created, and have a small delay before becoming active when first spawned.
T1: Increase number of mines
T2: Reduce mine arming delay
T3: Mines also add a stacking slow
NPCs should be able to trigger the mines so that creep waves clear out the mines over time. Technically the mines would have a despawn time but if you played Trapper back when he was still available you'd know that your traps are basically always gonna get triggered before they expire if you placed them anywhere decent. Speaking of Trapper: having Diver's trap ability spawn multiple mines in an AOE (you can’t cluster them too tightly) and as an ult (cooldown is especially long) should hopefully avoid the design issues Trapper had.
Compared to Trapper's spiders ult, I think Spectral Mines does the area denial schtick better in a few ways.
1. Stationary, so you can avoid them easier
2. Arming delay, so he can't just drop them all on you up close for a nuke
3. Would ideally float at head-height, so you can notice them easier
Compared to Seven's area control ult, it also has a unique identity. Seven's ult starts doing damage instantly while the mines have an arming time. Meanwhile, Seven's ult goes away after he stops ulting, while Diver's keeps a map presence for a longer time.
Compared to Trapper's spiders ult, I think Spectral Mines does the area denial schtick better in a few ways.
1. Stationary, so you can avoid them easier
2. Arming delay, so he can't just drop them all on you up close for a nuke
3. Would ideally float at head-height, so you can notice them easier
Compared to Seven's area control ult, it also has a unique identity. Seven's ult starts doing damage instantly while the mines have an arming time. Meanwhile, Seven's ult goes away after he stops ulting, while Diver's keeps a map presence for a longer time.
Gameplay-wise I'm satisfied with how the character concept turned out. There's a lot of gameplay scenarios I can think of that let you use different parts of his kit to different effects.
His chase isn't good due to horrible mobility, but I think teamfights would still be fun for him because you get the general flow of Wrench Throw -> Rush to initiate, then Rush -> The Bends for sustain, ending off with dropping Spectral Mines behind the enemies' escape route to trap them.
Rush dealing self damage + the Bends charging off self damage & reducing Spectral Mines' cooldown is a possible cheese risk, so I think that Dredging Rush's self heal should only come from successful hero hits, so you can't cheese it against creep waves/jungle as much.
Another possible issue is that his kit might make it impossible to push against him if tuned poorly, but thanks to his horrible mobility he'd be very vulnerable to a Bebop hook/Paradox swap as long as his sustain from his 2 and 3 aren't tuned too high.
