Firmament: The melee hero ya'll keep asking for

[Rosgath]

I keep seeing a lot of people want a dedicated melee hero. I decided to work up a concept that I think might be ok for that. Place filler picture is obviously a Place filler.


This hero has some SPECIAL RULES regarding his gun. The following are the details surrounding it.

• Primary Fire:
  • Air burst (from his fists, duh) that deals 1 Bullet damage
  • Unlimited ammo
  • 2 shots per second
  • 22m range, ~600mps Bullet Velocity
  • This is basically just a tool for securing souls. It can't even really be used to drop enemies due to the extremely low damage (unless you decide to grab something like Mystic Shot, which still works but is very meh)
• Secondary Fire:
  • Begins meditating, granting the “Focused” buff
  • Focused: +1m range to your next melee attack or ability. Stacks up to 5 times
  • -2s Parried Stun duration at max stacks (this is important given the increased range of his melee attacks. It would be too easy to parry abuse him otherwise)
  • +50% Stamina Regeneration while Meditating
  • Fire rate affects Stamina regen bonus and Focus stack rate
  • Focused Stack rate: 2 Stacks per second (Base)

Stamina is listed on the image above as scaling with Spirit, but is actually scaling with boons. The numbers mean that you will get a 3rd stamina bar at 16 boons (about halfway through the game) and a 4th bar at max boons.

ALMOST forgot the lore for him:

A Fate’s Tale

John Starr was ready the day the Eclipse happened. He had been watching the skies. Studying them. Preparing. Training his mind and body to harness the power of the Heavens. He knew the Patrons were coming. He’s certain they have nothing good planned for the world.



And he has a plan to turn their own strength back on them.

 

[Diamations]

melee characters and melee abilities are always a guilty pleasure of mine and they look fun with some cool movement options. i think T3 on falling star might be too much cooldown reduction for what the ability offers. Also im a little confused on what heavenly mind is supposed to do?

and btw how did you make these graphics, id love to know for my own stuff!

 

[nathanieljbrill]

I don't think there should be a melee only hero, as it's more build restrictive than a character that could be built as melee, or spirit, or gun. That said, I always like seeing your characters, and think this is well made. Why did you decide on the name firmament?

 

[Rosgath]

melee characters and melee abilities are always a guilty pleasure of mine and they look fun with some cool movement options. i think T3 on falling star might be too much cooldown reduction for what the ability offers. Also im a little confused on what heavenly mind is supposed to do?

and btw how did you make these graphics, id love to know for my own stuff!

The graphics and done with the Deadmock tool: tryneus.github.io/deadmock/

As for Falling star, it has a 38s CD by default and most abilities have something around a 50% CD reduction if it's their 5 point ability (examples: Shoulder Charge and Alchemical Flask) so the CD reduction is generally in line with what other abilities have. It could probably come down to something like 18 or 16s CD reduction, but it should still be very high.

Also, with regards to Heavenly Mind: the idea is that it is a togglable passive damage reduction. By default, it reduces damage from enemies who are far from you. The further they are, the less damage they do (to the listed maximum damage reduction). It can be toggled to be inverted so that it reduces damage you take from close enemies, with reduced damage reduction the further they are from you.

It's a 2 part tool. The first part is to enable him to actually play in lane. A melee dedicated hero needs some massive damage reduction and strong health regen in order to not get poked out of lane. This provides poke resistance, and he has some good base regen to make up the other part.

The second part is to give him the ability to brawl with other tanks. He has no inherent healing, so his damage reduction needs to be strong.

The best way to deal with Firmament is to force him to engage someone in melee, and have a ranged hero blow him up. If he has to turn Heavenly mind to damage reduction from close targets then he becomes vulnerable to long range enemies, and vice versa. He just has no reason to turn his damage reduction to work against close targets if he doesn't have someone to engage him.

 

[Rosgath]

I don't think there should be a melee only hero, as it's more build restrictive than a character that could be built as melee, or spirit, or gun. That said, I always like seeing your characters, and think this is well made. Why did you decide on the name firmament?

Honestly? I felt like a melee themed character very heavily fits the "monk" character archetype and I couldn't think of a good "Monk" style theme that would fit very well into Deadlock's Lore. That said, celestial events are a big thing with Deadlock and there are plenty of Monk themes following Astronomy and the study of the stars, so I figured Firmament (meaning a great expanse, frequently used to refer to the Sea or the Sky) was fitting.

My next character concept is a Flamethrow style hero, btw.