Fortified Fist

[xenilla]

Weapon Item
500 Soul Cost

+12% Melee Damage
+35 Bonus Health
+10% Heavy Melee Distance

Passive:
When you perform a Heavy Melee attack against a hero, gain temporary bullet shield equal to 12% of Melee damage dealt, up to a maximum of 50.
16s Cooldown.
Buff duration: 10s.

Component of Melee Charge
Melee Charge now also grants this passive, but instead grants temporary bullet shield equal to 20% of Melee damage dealt, up to a maximum of 100.
Cooldown and buff duration don't change.
Melee Charge changes to grant +24% Melee damage instead of +10% Weapon damage.


Note:
Since I can't playtest, I don't know if it would make more sense for it to outright give the player a flat 50/100 bullet shield on landing a heavy attack, or for it to remain a percentage-based amount. Might be very difficult to actually get a reasonable amount of bullet shield until you're rocking 30k souls and Lifestrike + Spirit Snatch. Could also be that the percentages are changed.

Made this because it felt wrong that there's only 1 Melee item in the Weapon category, despite Weapon damage being what increases Melee damage also. The reasoning behind changing Melee Charge's damage to Melee Damage is for the investment into a melee build to have some kind of risk, i.e. you're spending less on upgrading your bullet damage, but your melee attacks will be stronger as a result. It basically asks the player the following question: Are you willing to invest in a melee damage build? If so, continue; if not, don't buy this item.

 

[gibnewitems]

Cool, but this item looks really underwhelming compared to the other options. Melee laners already have a pretty good t1 weapon item to buy called close quarters, and I don't see any scenario in which this item would be a better buy damage-wise. Want sustain? Melee lifesteal by itself provides at least 34 hp on a heavy melee against an npc for less than half the cooldown. Melee charge is only a t2, so it's already pretty accessible during lane (something that this item existing would actually nerf by making melee charge more expensive).

The reasoning behind changing Melee Charge's damage to Melee Damage is for the investment into a melee build to have some kind of risk, i.e. you're spending less on upgrading your bullet damage, but your melee attacks will be stronger as a result. It basically asks the player the following question: Are you willing to invest in a melee damage build? If so, continue; if not, don't buy this item.

Non-melee builds buy melee charge so that they can go a lot further with fleetfoot heavy melee cancel. They don't buy it so they can deal a little more melee damage in the event that they don't get parried.

 

[Mr.Mindish]

Made this because it felt wrong that there's only 1 Melee item in the Weapon category, despite Weapon damage being what increases Melee damage also

I think it's because Meleeing is generally inconsistent, since only a handful of characters can get a guarenteed heavy melee hit. A lot of melee builds get Point Blank, Fleetfoot/Kinetic Dash, Hunter's Aura or Escalating Resiliance since all these items encourage the melee playstyle of getting in your opponents face. If there were multiple melee items under the same category, there would be less flexibility for buying items like the ones I listed, since you'd want to maximise meleeing.

I'm not good enough at the game to know how good this concept would be. I really like the idea of investing into melee over time, but this weapon might be a bit underwhelming for the laning phase compared to Spirit Strike and Melee Lifesteal. Maybe it could remove 1 stamina on a heavy hit?